I am working on a resin caboose kit and was wondering what color it should be painted. This thread might also belong in the model railroading section, but the age-old PRR Tuscan ‘actual color’ debate is history related too. The box art on my kit has a bright red, almost Caboose Red, but most of the restored prototype cars are a darker red. Is it Boxcar Red or like an Oxide Red or something? I was thinking about Tuscan, but I thought that was passenger stock only. If any of you guys know a model paint I could use, that would be cool too.
Check out scalecoat II paints they have the colors from Chinese red, to caboose red, to box car red in 3 shades. Hope it helps.jt
Here's a PRR N5 that I shot on the BR&WRR in NJ. Not sure if it was once in authentic color, but it shows the effects of a life outdoors. I'd go for something a bit darker, but whichever color you choose will probably be close to many of the prototypes.
Well, Railpictures isn't a whole lot of help. In the only vintage pic where the crummy is well-lit, it's way, way down the track behind the K-4 Pacific. http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php
That is what is weird; all of them are different colors. I don’t know if that is due to different interpretations during restoration, the film in the camera, or actual color differences. What color would you call that? It doesn’t look like Tuscan, which also changed over the years. It looks like the colors they used on freight cars, which I still don’t have a color match for.
Some of the black and white phots look like a very dark tuscan, or it could even be DGLE (dark green locomotive enamel--a bucket of black with a splash of green).
I was paging through my copy of PRR Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Sweetland and Yanosey (c. 1992) and indeed, just about any shade of Tuscan or red/brown would suffice given the effects of a life outdoors in hard service. One distinct color that serves to confuse the analysis is PRR's "focal orange" color which was introduced in June 1965 to increase visibility of cabin cars. The color isn't an orange as we think of it, but rather a lighter, brighter shade red or oxide red with a very slight orange tint.
