<*>[Attachment(s) from Jonathan Harris included below]
Any discussion of color is bound to be subjective. You just have to study
photos and test and compare and find what looks right to you.
Good advice from Nelson, although I think even paint chips have their limits as
a basis for judgment. I suspect, for instance, that the "too dark" grey in
certain manufacturers' blackbirds may have been the result of following color
formulas or chips too strictly, rather than compensating with the understanding
that (as Charlie says) color has scale and a small-scale model has to be
somewhat lighter than the full-sized prototype. To paraphrase what the late Al
Armitage said: when you paint a model, you aren't (like a shop painter)
painting the object itself but (like an artist) painting the light that you as
a viewer see reflected off that object.
I don't want to paint an idealized model, I want to represent something real or
imagined at a specific time and place, whether new or weathered (and hopefully
my buildings and rolling stock represent a plausible mixture of both). That
gives you a lot of choice, though. The photos I've seen of actual Burlington
depots and out-buildings, both in service and restored, show a fair range of
color. And why shouldn't they? Each structure or piece of equipment looks
vastly different throughout its lifetime, and similar structures in different
environments weather differently. So as Nelson says, it depends on when and
where....
Moreover, the same building or locomotive or car looks different in different
lights, at different times of day, and in different seasons of year, as well as
depending on whether it's rained lately, and many other things. And it always
will be seen on a background of landscape and sky and in the context of other
prominent objects, in this case, especially other structures and railroad cars.
The red of your depot will be seen against the reds of your freight cars, the
reds of brick buildings and platforms, etcetera. So you must create a
recognizable system of differences among your paints, even as there is
diversity in your individual models.
Most of the Burlington depots I see repainted today seem pretty light and
bright to me. That seems to be the vision shared among most of my fellow
modelers, maybe because that's how they in fact were painted and what paint
chips show. But the historial photos I've seen in the various color pictorials
and other sources show buildings that to me look darker. Perhaps it's from
years of accumulated soot, but whatever the reason, it's what I see and like
and want to represent. So for the red I use Floquil Tuscan, usually dry-brushed
over weathered wood/grey primer. My green trim is Floquil Pullman Green. In
both cases the paint is further weathered by dry-brushing a little extra color
lightened with white or depot buff. Attached are a couple photos I snapped this
afternoon of a shelf in my office where I've been fooling around with with
setting up a small module. The 2 not-quite-finished models of depot and section
house show how these paints look in practice; one photo was taken with a flash,
the other in natural daylight, so you can see how the color varies. Many would
find these models too dark, but they look pretty close to me.
You just have to experiment. Build a coal shed. Build a dry closet. Happy
modeling.
Jonathan
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "stjoeterminal" <stjoeterminal@...> wrote:
>
> I hope this topic isn't as controversial as "CGW maroon" on another Yahoo
> group, but what are your recommendations for model railroad paint to match
> the red and green colors on CB&Q wood frame depots?
>
> As a follow up, what year did they (the Q or the BN) start painting depots
> white?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Don Wetmore
> StJoeTerminal@...
>
<*>Attachment(s) from Jonathan Harris:
<*> 2 of 2 Photo(s)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CBQ/attachments/folder/884157344/item/list
<*> building colors daylight.jpg
<*> building colors with flash.jpg
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