[Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner included below]
Jon:
Here are two images that, to my eye, accurately reflect the color of fairly fresh mineral red as applied to locomotive cab roofs. Shown are two O-1-A Mikes, one a coal-burner, the other an oil-burner. It didn't seem to matter which fuel was burned, the
exhaust from its combustion would within a year or two turn the cab roof virtually black. And while that darkening was taking place the sun was steadily bleaching to mineral red to a lighter shade, which became less and less noticeable as the black of the
smoke slowly won the battle.
Note, too, in the shot of 5082 at the Gibson roundhouse in Omaha, that the wooden roundhouse and the steel water tank behind it are also painted virtually the same color. And that's because, by the time of these photos, the same paint was being used for
all of them. Ray Anderson, the Q 23rd St. roundhouse painter here in Denver at the time of the BN merger, told me that when the roundhouse and water tank had been repainted by a B&B crew in the early 1950s, he "requisitioned" a 5-gallon bucket of the mineral
red paint and thereafter used it for cab roofs and anything else that required mineral red. Freight cars, of course, were the same color until 1959, but rip tracks and car shops were by this time using a particularly tough version trade-named Carhide -- but
it was still the same color. Back in the early years of the 20th Century, when the railroad began painting depots and other structures red, the color was referred to as Indian red, while freight cars were mineral red and cab roofs were red lead. These may
indeed have been slightly different colors back then, but by the post-WWII era, they were all the same. And I don't detect an orange shade in the color at all.
Hol
From: CBQ@yahoogroups.com <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of jzook@comcast.net [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 8:45 PM
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CBQ] Re: Red cab roofs
Hi all,
I've been following this thread with much interest, the question came to mind about what color or shade is mineral red. My limited research definitely shows mineral red is as ambiguous as boxcar red or oxide red. So, here's my question. There are lots of
images in Google of #4978 in Mendota, IL. The locomotive has clearly had a cosmetic restoration. Is the cab roof color an accurate representation of the Q's recipe for mineral red?
As always, thank you in advance,
Jon
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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