As I mentioned in my follow up to Gary, the card sets have only been in the manufacturers possession for 5 months. I'm sure the fruits of our labor will be seen in upcoming releases.
I think that there are at least 2 approaches to color selection. One is objective and relates to color standards or standardization, and manifests itself in paint specifications and references, for example, such as color cards. This is the approach that we use to specify paints for production facilities, or offshore platforms, for locomotives, or FedEx or UPS trucks, for instance.
The other approach is more subjective and relates to selection of colors that "look right" to the beholder, perhaps under alternative conditions of scale or lighting.
Please let me illustrate:
The following image shows colors selected by 3 different individuals to represent the NP Loewy scheme, presented under the same lighting conditions (namely, 5000K LEDs on the Plum River section of my C&I Sub).
From right to left there are 2 Walthers cars, a Rapido car and 2 (well, 1-1/2
) Concor cars that were custom-painted and which I recently acquired from a modeler in Michigan. Obviously, the 3 individuals who selected these colors each though their selections were prototypical, but equally obviously, the colors they selected were different.
Which is "correct"?
Well, even that may be difficult to establish objectively.
One approach would be matching paint chips, or duPont color samples for the original selections by the railroads.
Another approach might be comparison to contemporary or "proto" -photos such as these from Marty Bernard on RailroadPictureArchives.net of an NCL in St. Paul:
or from Jim Sands, in the NP part of George Ellwood's site, of an NCL in southbound in Savanna, Illinois:
or (my favorite photo for this train) from Fred Klein's site, which references an original photo by Joe Welsh of the NCL northbound at Savanna, Illinois, taken from the toll bridge looking northeast:
I think these proto-photos demonstrate that there is an element of "truth" to each of the paint-color selections made by Walthers or by Rapido or by my "supplier" in Michigan.
But personally, frankly, subjectively the look that I feel is best for this train on my layout is the latter look, of that Joe
Welsh photo, that is most closely approximated by my Michigan "supplier".
And it is probably NOT supported by the objective, color-chip approach.
OK. So chew me out and shoot at me. It will be water off a duck's back, as they say:
I am red-green color-blind!!!
