Some time ago I bought a GHQ kit for two depressed center flat cars. A decal sheet is in the kit, but no reference which road used which color. The instructions only state that most roads used freight car red. I thought about building them as New Haven cars, or New York Central. Taking other flat cars as reference, NH might be black. There is a black and white photo of a NH car on Steam Era Freight Cars, but naturally it does not show the color, and no legible inscriptions. I think I had seen a similar question somewhere, but a search gave no results. So I am trying again The GHQ kit is nice. A bit hard to drill those tiny holes, but good looking. I Used surplus Intermountain Bettendorf trucks (coupler cut off) and MTL 1023 mounted in the precast holes. The car runs nicely due to the weight. Have a nice weekend. Here in Germany it is getting dark early and the best thing to do is go to the basement and do some modelling :tb-wink:
The color depends on the road, and sometimes the era and specific class of car! Are there any hints to date on the decal sheet, by any chance? I may be able to help if you are doing NYC.
I found a picture of a custom decorated H0 model at TMB Custom Models (mentioned in another thread). It seems to be just the car I had in mind, can even identify the layout of the lettering. Since the kit contains a second car, so this could be NYC. The decal sheet seems quite generic, one inscription says "NEW 5-50". So if you have a lettering sketch and a hint on the color, this would be great.
Looks like freight car brown would be most appropriate for a NYC flat car 1941-1956. Here is a summary of what you can find on Terry Link's wonderful Canada Southern Railway web site: * All NYC hoppers, flat cars and gondolas were painted black prior to February 20, 1941. * From February 20, 1941 to June 6, 1956 they were painted freight car brown. * After June 6, 1956, shops equipped for handling F-1 black car cement, between April 1 and October 1 were BLACK. Shops NOT equipped for handling F-1 cement and ALL shops between October 1 and April 1 were freight car brown. This information comes from Specification P-18, Painting Open Top and Flat Cars, first issued December 28, 1921. In practice, it seems that locations with inside paint facilities used black F-1 cement year round and these locations accounted for the preponderance of cars painted. * From about 1960 to 1968 a black paint replaced the F-1 cement and was used year round on hoppers, gondolas and flatcars. Some special service gondolas received silver paint. Some P&LE gondolas and flatcars were painted Century Green between 1960 and late 1966. This matches my personal observation. The strange thing is that most photos I can find of depressed-center flat cars seem to show black cars. Maybe they were an exception? Without specific dates on the photos and because of poor color reproduction of the photos, I would still be inclined to go with the freight car brown. It is a dark iron oxide red-brown color that faded to a much lighter shade. Hope this helps.
