I have a question to pose which actually brought me here... I am planning to paint a diesel locomotive in the New York Central's famous "lightning stripe" paint scheme. I have already purchased decals, Microscale #87-49. After close inspection of prototype pictures, it appears the NYC had two variatios of the lightning stripe: black locomotives for freight service, and gray locomotives for passenger service. My questions are: 1. What paint (brand and color) is the most widely used to represent the NYC's gray paint on its passenger locomotives? 2. Will Microscale's 87-49 lightning stripe decals work for both passenger and freight? The lightning stripe is a dark gray, and there would seem to be very little contrast against the gray paint of the passenger locomotives. Was the lightning stripe the same color on both the freight and passenger? Did the passenger locomotives use a lighter-colored lightning stripe to achieve greater contrast against the gray body of the engine? Or does Microscale make a separate lighting stripe decal sheet for the gray-painted passenger locomotives? Thank you all so much for your help!!!
Mtrpls, welcome to Trainboard! I will be of little help with the modelling aspects and don't know what Microscale's decals look like, but I can tell you some about the Central, stripes and colors. The earliest passenger diesels featured (what I call the four-track) stripes on the nose that didn't extend back past the nose at all. Later versions had the stripes extend back further to about the first cab side windows. The railroad experimented with shades of grey a LOT, but seem to have settled on the dark grey passenger and black freight scheme. As far as I can tell, the grey part of the lightning stripe was the same shade for both schemes, and of course was a lot more in contrast on the freight locos. Central changed the passenger car shades of the 20th Century Limited in 1948, and the diesels were painted the same shades then. If you can find any of Ed Nowak's books on the Central, they help some, but most pix are black and white, and different shades of grey show up. It's really hard to tell. Hope this helps a little.
I'll second Fitz in that the stripes for both freight and diesel were the same. At least I've never read or heard otherwise. And I've read a lot. I use badgers model flex, they make NYC dark and light greys. They seem right to me, but everyone has their opinion. BTW, the black freight/grey passenger schemes were not adhered to very strictly, I've seen freight units in grey as well. If doing a particular loco it would pay to check photos! Gary
