Lowell Smith GN passenger car colors vs. Tru Scale paint: are they close?

[chessie system fan]

I'm considering getting some cars of his.  I also want a 95-100% accurate train, which means some custom building and painting.  This goes for Empire Builder green and orange as well as Big Sky Blue.  Will my custom cars match his cars when mixed together in a train?

[robert3985]

Even though there may be some "perfect" paint matches out there, when looking at prototype photos, there are many instances of prototype cars not perfectly matching each other's paint colors.  Yeah, most of the time, they're close, but...after being run for a few years, the colors fade...so differences in car color are actually prototypical.

I used to worry about matching my UP engines' colors, as well as various passenger cars, but UP Armour Yellow is notorious for manufacturers getting it wrong...sometimes just a bit wrong, sometimes REALLY wrong!  So, I'm not as picky as I used to be after doing research into passenger consists and looking at color photos and the prototypical variances.

I'd advise that "close" color matching is probably prototypically more correct than "perfect", so if you're interested more in prototype appearance than artistic esthetics, I'd go for "close".

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[nkalanaga]

Tamiya TS-10 spray paint (rattle can) is very close to Railsmith BSB.  That's what I use for passenger cars.

Modeling 1974 BN, I'll use anything close for freight cars.  The prototypes varied widely by then.

[Sokramiketes]

Even though there may be some "perfect" paint matches out there, when looking at prototype photos, there are many instances of prototype cars not perfectly matching each other's paint colors.  Yeah, most of the time, they're close, but...after being run for a few years, the colors fade...so differences in car color are actually prototypical.

I used to worry about matching my UP engines' colors, as well as various passenger cars, but UP Armour Yellow is notorious for manufacturers getting it wrong...sometimes just a bit wrong, sometimes REALLY wrong!  So, I'm not as picky as I used to be after doing research into passenger consists and looking at color photos and the prototypical variances.

I'd advise that "close" color matching is probably prototypically more correct than "perfect", so if you're interested more in prototype appearance than artistic esthetics, I'd go for "close".

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

I agree, with a small caveat.  If you're adding one car to an otherwise matching train, it will stick out like a sore thumb.  If you assemble a Cities train with cars from 4-5 manufacturers, then yes, it looks right and you can add some consistent light weathering to make it all blend in.

Sometimes, I'll just make sure the roofs are the same colors, which really helps the cohesiveness of a train that otherwise varies.

I like the Lowell Smith colors a lot.  In fact, he takes a lot of care to get good colors and fonts on his trains.  The GN cars blend in with the Concor and Kato cars.  TruColor will be a decent starting point, but you may find other greens better as sometimes TC or even Scalecoat get a bit pullman green and drab. 

[JoeD]

Even though there may be some "perfect" paint matches out there, when looking at prototype photos, there are many instances of prototype cars not perfectly matching each other's paint colors.  Yeah, most of the time, they're close, but...after being run for a few years, the colors fade...so differences in car color are actually prototypical.

I used to worry about matching my UP engines' colors, as well as various passenger cars, but UP Armour Yellow is notorious for manufacturers getting it wrong...sometimes just a bit wrong, sometimes REALLY wrong!  So, I'm not as picky as I used to be after doing research into passenger consists and looking at color photos and the prototypical variances.

I'd advise that "close" color matching is probably prototypically more correct than "perfect", so if you're interested more in prototype appearance than artistic esthetics, I'd go for "close".

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

I often tell the story how when in the navy, attached to HC3, a shipboard helicopter squadron, we had to maintain the fuselages daily.  Salt, chipping, barf...what ever took its toll.  We had crates of Dark Helo Grey  spray bombs to shoot over any exposed surfaces.  Same FSN number and everything.  By the time we came back from a deployment our helo's were 50 different shades of the base color.  We received new units and they were different as well.  So I'm not always too worked up about shad differences to a point.  I'm sure Lowell can tell us what paint they use, the cars he did at MTL were color matched as best as possible.  Maybe his china production has a different source?  The suggestion elsewhere to dust them and match the roof's is a great one.  I take clear flat and add some off color, just a little so I can build to the intensity I want.  Great way to blend the cars to look more prototypical.

Joe
 

[chessie system fan]

Everyone has good points. 

Specifically, if I put a lot of custom work into accurate 8-4-4 and 16-4 BSB sleepers now and then plop some BSB dome cars in the consist right next to them next year when they arrive, will I regret it?



I have all the Tru Scale paint needed, I have Kato green and orange F units (so I can match to those if Lowell's orange and green is close to them).  I don't have any Lowell cars or other BSB-painted items for comparison.

[nkalanaga]

It might be easiest to simply buy a couple of Lowell's cars.  If you're trying for a complete GN train, he still has prototype dining cars available in both schemes.

[chessie system fan]

Yes, the diners...  I've been on the fence ever since they came out.  The issue there is it's only "close enough."  The roof and underbody details are from the 10-6, which is incorrect.  The skirting varied between cars and I haven't found a BSB car that wouldn't need skirt modification. His car skirts are closer to the Northern Pacific diner.  So do I pay ~$70 to get a car the needs the roof replaced, the underbody replaced, and the skirting removed just to see what color blue I need... compared to printing the 100% accurate 3D model I already designed before these came out for fifty cents plus paint, decals, trucks and couplers that I already own?  So far, I haven't been able to bring myself to buy one.   But that's just me.

But the TS-10 French Blue is a good tip.  I'll add that to my next shopping trip.  Thanks.   

[nkalanaga]

The only skirt change I noticed was to cut off the end skirts.  That's easy to do.

I hadn't noticed the incorrect underframe.  Interesting.

[OldEastRR]

I don't think I've ever seen in-person a prototype train where every car was the exact shade, intensity and basic color as the others, except in the publicity photos taken of the brand-new equipment. Unless over the years every car was run over the same route, through exact same weather, were pulled for maintence or repair at the same time for the same length of time -- in the same shop -- and ahd all been painted at once by the same paint crew with the same weather conditions and the exact same mix of paint ;... well, they ain't gonna perfectly match.
I think the desire for this condition comes from the old days of generic train sets of shiny perfectly-matched colors. Or somebody just wants everything to look perfect. To each his own. Considering KATO, who's very keen on making absolutely true replicas of UP passenger equipment, has gone through at least four different shades of Armor Yellow since 1996, that's a good enough standard of uniformity for me.

[nkalanaga]

Another factor with GN's Big Sky Blue is that the cars were repainted over a roughly three year period.  So even two cars, from the same series, would likely have weathered for different times.

One obvious exception is the 44-seat coaches bought from UP, which were painted BSB when purchased, but that was the probably the only group repainted as a group.