Actually,I should clarify this..I have nowhere to buy RAILROAD paint..There are "hobby shops" in my area,but the cater to everything else but.There are dealers here that carry Model Master,if Testors puts RR colors in that line,I may be in luck.I'm kind of an odd duck,too,in that I almost never use RR paint out of the bottle.I don't even look at the name on the bottle,I buy by the color I see,or ouyright mix my own.I could care less if it says "UP Yellow" I'm probably buying RDG yellow,and mixing Reefer Orange in it to get what I want.That becomes a problem for me buying online.I seldom like what color I see in the bottle that's supposed to be a certain color,I want to see it before I buy it...
It is time for the Lazarus project, perhaps the NMRA? Get one bottle of each and get a color match now so that we don't lose everything.
So if you don't really care what color the bottle says, and mix your own, why not buy something like Vallejo that has many shades of each color? If you can't hit the mark with one particular bottle, a shade or two lighter or darker will probably be the right one. Vallejo seems to be more and more available. There are on line sources and a lot of model shops stock the brand.
Tony: That's a great idea. NMRA needs the manpower to do something like that. If you are serious about this and want to help, PM me and I will see how this can get done. Pete
Because I have nowhere to buy THAT,either..I never heard of Vallejo until this thread..Pretty much all I can walk into a hobby shop and buy without driving 100 miles is Testors..
Again, having worked for Testors for seven years, four of which being the PM of Floquil and Pactra, I can tell you that RPM is your typical corporate greed company. I could write a book on some of the stuff I saw happen there and it was disgusting. Everybody I worked with when I was doing the Floquil line is now gone. From the Testor President all the way down to the Consumer Affairs guy. They were all let go or were smart and moved on to better companies. I will not buy an RPM product just based on ethical principle alone now, forget the fact that their paint and products are sub par. I too have been using Tru-Color and will only say it works well for my needs. Let Testors fade into oblivion, they made their bed and they really could care less as to what any of us have to say about train paint.
I posted on the Rust-Oleum Facebook page that I wouldn't use their paint. They got back to me with a PM and a toll free number right away. They want to know why I don't like their paint. To bad the Testors Facebook page doesn't respond like that. They probably laid everyone off. Maybe other members should post on the Rust-Oleum Facebook page. someone will get the message that there are displeased customers. Not that it will change anything.
Rustoleum really isn't what it used to be.It used to last for years,now,it fades after a year or so.ACE is way cheaper,just as good..
RPM is no different than any other company... You guys that are planning a boycott (or not calling it a boycott but are actively avoiding RPM products?) because of this decision (or any other) are missing the trees for the forest or the forest for the trees or something like that. You will not find one parent corporation anywhere who does not actively seek to cut production costs and increase profits. That's how business works world wide. This kind of activity is what business does. If you're not increasing profits and growing your business by measurable amounts, you're considered to be going out of business. That's just how business works. For those that are complaining about not being able to get products locally... well... Welcome to the club called "everybody". It's called the Internet, and it's been around for quite a while. It's not a new concept though, Imagine how the local five & dime felt when Sears & Roebuck started mailing their catalogs out. Again... Just business doing what business does. To generate more profit, you either need more sales, or less cost. If there is a void left behind by this decision some one will fill it. I'm expecting there to not be a void here, it sounds like there are several other options out there for RR specific colors that are considered by many to be superior products anyway. Paint technology has advanced beyond Testors, and they're now scrambling to find a way to make up for it. They're selling the same paint they did 30 years ago. There are few products we buy today that have been unchanged for 30 years and have not been updated or replaced by superior products.
That is a really good assessment of this thread. I don't plan to boycott anything. I will make a decision based on price and quality. If I am standing in the Home Depot and it is a tie between one brand and a brand owned by RPM, RPM will lose. If the RPM brand is a better quality/value proposition, I will buy RPM. Business is business. They have their's and I have mine.
And I'll check big box stores not named Home Depot to see what they have... and my LHS--in this case, "Local Hardware Store" which is walking distance from the house. As noted earlier in this thread, I wasn't impressed with having to use three coats of Rust-Oleum "one coat" white paint-- over a white top of my daughter's desk. I was already thinking of trying something else before the RPM announcement.
Well, I have to report I'm satisfied after doing what I should have done in the first place. After getting negative reponses from hobby shops, both local and online in the US, about shipping Tru-Color paint to Australia I decided it wouldn't hurt to ask Tru-Color themselves and got a reply within minutes from Rick Galazzo of Tru-Color. He says there is no problem as long as the order is under 3.5lbs, ie;36 1oz, 18 2oz bottles or a combination thereof, and just to send a list of what I want with my address and that I can pay by Paypal. As soon as I find out if any club members would like to add to my own order to spread postage out I'll be doing just that. So as far as I'm concerned now this thread is done, RPM can take their whole Testors range and stick it you know where. If I'd known I could get Tru-Color I wouldn't have been buying Floquil anyway.
Over on the trains.com forum there's a very useful post that has two equivalency tables - one published by Revell that lists various colors and closest equivalents including Floquil and Pollyscale, the other is a backwards listing of Pollyscale/Floquil and the nearest equivalents in 'whatever', including Model Master,s Humbrol, Vallejo, etc. That's really useful. That's kind of what I was looking for here, to answer the eternal question of how I match SP Lettering Gray (which is the standard color of my Climax woodwork, below, in my signature)....--> uh...Gloss Gull Gray. Yuck. As I was afraid of, there really isn't a substiture in a flat acrylic or flat, period. Probably end up tweaking it a bit to something else, but yeah, the revolution continues. At least grimy black is --> Vallejo "Russian Uniform" (??). Priceless. Now if I could just find a supplier for it.
Two that are not "premium content": http://www.trainweb.org/mavmrrdigest/grafx/ColorGuide.pdf http://downloads.hobbico.com/misc/rmx/TES_Revell_Paint_Match_Guide.pdf The one that is: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/218231.aspx
I'm surprised how poor the distribution channel is for Vallejo paints. I've never seen them. Walthers doesn't carry them (although I emailed them and bugged them about it - got no response) and none of the hobby shop retailers within 100 miles do either, including a couple that are heavy into military kits. Haven't found an online source of retail supply yet either, but I'll keep looking. The retail shops do carry ModelMaster, that's about it. I was mail-ordering all my Floquil and Pollyscale before this happened from Walthers. Man, this is really miserable. Now I've experimented (successfully) with some of the flat acrylic creamcoat paints on buildings - in fact my La Posada was brush painted entirely that way (the Spanish tile roof, adobe walls, and Colter Blue trim worked very well) but I'm still not to the point where I think I'd want to paint a locomotive with it, it's like putting melted butter on it and hoping it dries right.
There are 2285 listings for Vallejo Paint on E Bay. One of their US distributors is Stevens International http://www2.stevenshobby.com:5641/ They have a list of shops they sell to.
Ebay???? seriously??? We are talking about ordering a random color, attempting to match a RR color without prior knowlege of the paint system. I'm not going to keep buying random colors online till I hit on the right one. At least buying the RR colors on line, you had a wing and a prayer that they were the color you were looking for. This is the kind of choice best made with the bottle in hand so you can compare A to B. PS. A little bit of info, Italeri paint is rebottled Valejo paint. They don't have the full color line but most of them. I have some Italeri rust that was given to me by a rep as a sample and it's not bad. You may have a better shot finding Italeri paint, not much better but it is an option.
Sources for Vallejo paint in the US can be found right from Vallejo's website: http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/country/distribution/54 I have seen Vallejo paints at several different Hobby Lobby locations, starting about a year ago. Not the entire catalog, but some common colors there. Searching for Vallejo on Amazon nets just about every product in the results. Yea, it's not a brick and mortar store you can go look at paint and match what you want but for a lot of folks that's nothing new. Walthers doesn't distribute a lot of stuff, that's no surprise either. There's a wide world beyond Walthers. Vallejo has been around quite a while from the sound of it, they must have some kind of distribution channel going and it can't be that terrible or they wouldn't still be around. They just don't market their paints to us directly or exclusively, or advertise in MR magazine, or distribute through railroady hobby shops because we're not their target demographic. I would expect that if more modelers outside of war figures and military kits begin showing interest in Vallejo paint it will start showing up in more places we frequent. That isn't going to happen overnight though, it's not like someone at Vallejo is sitting there with gallons of paint in reserve for when they turn the model railroad switch on. Could take a while before we see a Vallejo rack at a train shop or ad in MR Mag.
