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Post by wagnersteve on Dec 21, 2023 7:43:33 GMT -8
12/21/23, about 10:30 a.m., EST
The firm sent an email yesterday afternoon with a very nice "Season's Greetings" card with a steam-powered passenger train in a snowy nighttime setting, and, among other things, an update on the colors of the already announced Walthers Proto series models of Milwaukee Road rib-side cabooses decorated as St. Maries River Railroad 995 and 996. They had been announced as being red, white and blue. "As a result of some new information" they will be red, white and black. They are due in Spring 2024. Either some knowledgeable person sent Walthers better info or the firm did additional research, or both. In any case, it's a positive step.
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Post by drolsen on Dec 21, 2023 8:46:11 GMT -8
Two members of the Freight Car Enthusiasts group on Facebook posted that they emailed Walthers product support about the color issue and got quick replies back, followed by the update from Walthers. Great to see them listen to the feedback. It's a neat paint scheme on an interesting caboose.
Dave
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Post by Baikal on Dec 21, 2023 8:54:54 GMT -8
12/21/23, about 10:30 a.m., EST The firm sent an email yesterday afternoon with a very nice "Season's Greetings" card with a steam-powered passenger train in a snowy nighttime setting, and, among other things, an update on the colors of the already announced Walthers Proto series models of Milwaukee Road rib-side cabooses decorated as St. Maries River Railroad 995 and 996. They had been announced as being red, white and blue. "As a result of some new information" they will be red, white and black. They are due in Spring 2024. Either some knowledgeable person sent Walthers better info or the firm did additional research, or both. In any case, it's a positive step.
This caboose is red, white and blue (The Who soundtrack, why oh why?):
Multiple other photos show what looks like very dark blue. Some do look black. But comparing the blue/black upper portions to the underframe & trucks- which are obviously black, why the difference in many photos?
Either the RR is painting some equipment with black, some with blue...
OR
Dark blue fades to lighter blue.
But blue is not black. There's no way that the color in photo in the link above faded from black to medium blue.
Ponder this: If you were going to model the caboose shown in the link, what color paints would you use?
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ed
Full Member
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Post by ed on Dec 21, 2023 10:21:44 GMT -8
Walthers was informed by a most knowledgeable individual that the New Haven G-85 flat cars should have been painted freight car brown and not black. Walthers didn't listen and they were produced painted black. Will always continue to question their products as a result.
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Post by Mr. Trainiac on Dec 21, 2023 10:55:02 GMT -8
I am also skeptical of the cabooses having a black stripe: rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2774687The lettering is definitely black, and there is a clear difference between it and the truck/stripe color. Even when the car is dirty, the stepwells give it away: rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5088068The stringer facing the end of the car is dirty, while the interior of the stepwell shows the paint color. The outside may appear black and grimy, but the inside is dark blue. |
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Post by wagnersteve on Dec 21, 2023 11:05:42 GMT -8
12/21/2023, a bit past 2 pm, EST
Baikal, ed and Dr. Trainiac, your posts have convinced me that you're probably right. drolsen, what do you think now?
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Post by Baikal on Dec 21, 2023 11:47:37 GMT -8
Blue? Here's a song that's very well-known in former Soviet Union / eastern Europe and Japan. Made for kids but ageless.
"Голубой Вагон" (Goluboy Vagon - Blue railway car) featuring Crocodile Gina and Cheburashka. Stop-action film excerpt:
Add to long list of RR-related songs.
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Post by ambluco on Dec 21, 2023 11:49:04 GMT -8
Fox Valley did the MILW cabooses in N scale. They were blue. Walthers has done the cabooses in the video in the past, as black. All of Walthers St. Maries past models have been black (GP9, caboose). The video doesn't show the MILW cabooses, which in theory could have been painted differently, and why we use photos to model. It's the DLGE of the blue family: SW |
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Post by Baikal on Dec 21, 2023 13:18:19 GMT -8
Two members of the Freight Car Enthusiasts group on Facebook posted that they emailed Walthers product support about the color issue and got quick replies back, followed by the update from Walthers. Great to see them listen to the feedback. It's a neat paint scheme on an interesting caboose. Dave
Even people who should be knowlegable, like historical societies, make mistakes. Or have their own agendas.
An example is the former ATSF depot in San Dimas, California. Now owned by the City with Pacific Railroad Society as a tenant.
PRS, acting as a historic preservation consultant, advised the city on colors when the depot was refurbished & repainted 15+ years ago.
The building was repainted yellow with green trim. See photo links below. Shades, as far as I can tell, no ATSF Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever wore. In fact, I can't find a single example of any Spanish Colonial Revival structure in California originally in colors even close. And there are 10s of thousands of such structures. About 10 years ago I dug around the building base and found a couple of large exterior wall paint chips from the refurb. I sanded them down, exposing 12 or 13 layers of paint. All layers were variation of typical SoCal Spanish Colonial Revival & ATSF depot colors.
The City trusted PRS.
So now the building is CNW yellow and green, which coincidentally happens to be PRS colors. It's an offense to the City and it's citizens and anyone interested in historic accuracy. The ATSF historic society should be irritated but I don't know if they have made a statement. The depot stands in contrast to other nearby restored stucco depots like Fullerton, Pomona (SP and ATSF), Pasadena, Claremont, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Glendale, etc. Spanish Colonial Revival buildings are almost always variations of earth tones- tans, beige, off-whites, browns. Then and now. Because Spain and Mexico culture & architecture is a huge part of the local heritage, earth tones make up probably 80+ percent of all exterior colors in SoCal even today.
One of these depots is not like the others:
In the right light the San Dimas depot actually looks like this. Dim your eyes. (compare to typical commercial stucco building across street):
Pacific Railway Society equipment CNW colors:
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Post by NYSW3614 on Dec 21, 2023 15:18:57 GMT -8
Some good news! Any further word on their recently announced LV RS-2s?
Joshua
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Post by lvrr325 on Dec 21, 2023 16:21:43 GMT -8
They corrected the numbers so the engines would be accurate, as posted in threads about them
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Post by Colin 't Hart on Dec 21, 2023 23:03:38 GMT -8
12/21/2023, a bit past 2 pm, EST Baikal, ed and Dr. Trainiac, your posts have convinced me that you're probably right. drolsen, what do you think now? What we're seeing here is a cobalt ingredient in the paint -- possibly as a drying agent -- causing the paint to fade to a grey-blue. Here's a photo showing how these cabooses looked originally. Unknown photographer, Funnelfan collection.  |
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Post by schroed2 on Dec 22, 2023 3:41:20 GMT -8
What we're seeing here is a cobalt ingredient in the paint -- possibly as a drying agent -- causing the paint to fade to a grey-blue. Here's a photo showing how these cabooses looked originally. Unknown photographer, Funnelfan collection. looks like one of the situations where the truth is "it depends" |
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Post by edwardsutorik on Dec 22, 2023 6:33:34 GMT -8
Based on that photo, I'm going with a very dark blue on top, as compared to the black used elsewhere--especially that stripe on the side.
Ed
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ed
Full Member
Posts: 130
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Post by ed on Dec 22, 2023 6:59:05 GMT -8
Blue? Here's a song that's very well-known in former Soviet Union / eastern Europe and Japan. Made for kids but ageless. "Голубой Вагон" (Goluboy Vagon - Blue railway car) featuring Crocodile Gina and Cheburashka. Stop-action film excerpt: Add to long list of RR-related songs.
A Cheburashka reference and film clip in the HO forum! What are the chances of that? Shapoklyak made it to the caboose, too. |
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cklx
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Post by cklx on Dec 23, 2023 2:20:55 GMT -8
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Post by littlejoee76 on Dec 23, 2023 3:29:17 GMT -8
I've no way of posting photos but I've shot the St Maries RR often enough times in the last 14 years to know there's no blue in that paint job. To answer an earlier question of which paint would you use my answer would Tamiya TS4 German gray rattle can or Humbrol 67 tank gray tins.
Neill Horton
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Post by drolsen on Dec 23, 2023 6:47:58 GMT -8
This caboose is red, white and blue (The Who soundtrack, why oh why?): Multiple other photos show what looks like very dark blue. Some do look black. But comparing the blue/black upper portions to the underframe & trucks- which are obviously black, why the difference in many photos? The colors in many of the images of that video are weirdly distorted. When the vegetation looks florescent green, you really can't trust the rest of the colors in the image. Many of the locomotives in the video look much more like black over an off-white / cream stripe, probably because they were more freshly painted. I think that actually lends credence to the color being black, because railroads just don't paint their equipment in the same paint scheme design, but using two different colors like that. Lastly, littlejoee76's firsthand eyewitness experience is the most valuable, knowing that he saw the railroad in person and never observed any paint scheme that used blue. I've certainly seen paint colors distort over time like this, and the wide range of photo exposures seem to accentuate it. I took the liberty of using Photoshop Elements to edit the prototype photo that Colin posted above. Color correcting the light band in the middle, and removing the florescent green band that was hurting my eyes, makes the black color more apparent for me personally.  Dave |
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Post by wagnersteve on Dec 23, 2023 7:19:55 GMT -8
December 23, about 10:10 a.m., EST
This has been a very interesting thread -- and, I'm glad to say, much more civil and polite than some.
Dave, I think your latest post is VERY convincing.
The caboose in question is remarkably attractive, but I've never been to the real railroad and can't justify adding it to my already too large hoard. I already have a Walthers Milwaukee Road; I have ridden passenger trains on that railroad between Chicago and Milwaukee and saw its operation on Washington's Olympic Peninsula in 1964. The ex-Milwaukee caboose I"ve seen first hand most recently was converted to serve as the last car in a rail grinding train I saw in action at South Acton on the former B&M's Fitchburg route a few years ago.
I still haven't learned whether the Milwaukee's use of welded horizontal ribs to strengthen sheet steel on cabooses, freight cars and passenger train equipment it built In its West Milwaukee shops started before similar practice in the former USSR which spread to mainland China. Does any reader have information on this?
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Post by edwardsutorik on Dec 23, 2023 9:15:43 GMT -8
I still haven't learned whether the Milwaukee's use of welded horizontal ribs to strengthen sheet steel on cabooses, freight cars and passenger train equipment it built In its West Milwaukee shops started before similar practice in the former USSR which spread to mainland China. Does any reader have information on this? "Railway Prototype Cyclopedia 13" has a 75 page article on the MILW boxcars. "The 'ribs' were not separate pieces attached to the car sides but were, in fact, corrugations pressed into the bottom edge of each longitudinal side-sheet panel. Note that the panels overlapped..." The first cars using this concept were built in 1937. Note also that the panels were installed using welding, not rivets. Ed |
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wsor
Full Member
The Route of the Ruptured Duck
Posts: 131
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Post by wsor on Dec 23, 2023 10:26:05 GMT -8
I still haven't learned whether the Milwaukee's use of welded horizontal ribs to strengthen sheet steel on cabooses, freight cars and passenger train equipment it built In its West Milwaukee shops started before similar practice in the former USSR which spread to mainland China. Does any reader have information on this? I believe that to be a correct statement. Remember, the ribs aren't added, but the joints between the pieces of sheet steel used. Russia also borrowed the 3000 volt DC electrification concept. |
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Post by lvrr325 on Dec 24, 2023 10:20:30 GMT -8
Finally, the Brunswick Green of blue paint
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Post by grahamline on Dec 24, 2023 13:27:38 GMT -8
Indeed. Any black object photographed under a mid-day clear sky is going to display a faint blue cast.
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Post by ambluco on Dec 24, 2023 13:53:41 GMT -8
Three days too late for that quip!  Finally, the Brunswick Green of blue paint |
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Post by Baikal on Dec 24, 2023 14:50:08 GMT -8
Three days too late for that quip! Finally, the Brunswick Green of blue paint
Los Angeles Junction Alcos already hold that title.
Some say they are painted ATSF blue. ATSF owned the LAJ and their Hobart Yard shops were only about 3/4 mile away. So it would make sense if LAJ used ATSF blue paint.
BUT I've looked at dozens of LAJ color photos and they all look almost black. I've never seen that looked like the "average" ATSF blue.
Dunno.
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