Steam locomotive paint?

[TinyTurner]

It would be easy to conclude that all American steam locomotives have the same 'colour' black paint and smoke box Graphite.  They probably don't, so is there a reference for the 'correct' paints, and a favoured equivalent hobby paint?
I may as well expand that question to any other relevant steam colours.
Maybe a different approach for factory finish vs a bit faded?

Anything in the Tru-colour/Tamiya/AK Interactive range Etc?

Incidentally, how on earth did graphite stick to the smoke boxes, some sort of thick paint mix I presume?

[mmagliaro]

It was actually a thick mix of oil and graphite (in real life, I mean), not paint at all.  And they had to regularly reapply it, which is probably why the appearance varies so much.  The outside surface of the smokebox gets killer hot.  It's hard to get anything to permanently stay on it, I would think.

[nkalanaga]

Not only hard to keep anything on the smokebox, but the oil/graphite mixture caught and held soot and cinders.  It didn't stay silver very long!

[peteski]

Not only hard to keep anything on the smokebox, but the oil/graphite mixture caught and held soot and cinders.  It didn't stay silver very long!

To me fresh graphite is more of a dark metallic gray color than silver.

If the freshly coated smokeboxes looked silver, I wonder if they added some aluminum powder to the powdered graphite.

[JMaurer1]

This is just like BCR (box car red). It may have originally been a very specific color with a pantone value, however, once exposed to the sun, elements, and smoke, it quickly changed colors to darker or lighter brown-ish. Same goes for locomotives. Originally black...they quickly became dark grey depending on how well the crew took care of the locomotive. When I paint a steam locomotive, I use something that is black but usually mix it with a bit of grey so that the details can still be made out (black = absorbs light). Graphite, as already pointed out by mmagliaro, was actually a mix of linseed oil and actual graphite and was not paint at all so the color varied all of the time. The smoke box and firebox areas are exposed to high temperatures, and the mixture of graphite and linseed oil was just about the only thing that was able to withstand those high temps. Any normal paint would have burned off in a short period of time. BTW, it wasn't silver...although some RR's would paint the FRONT of the smoke box silver (SP being one) for visibility to try and make it easier for cars and pedestrians to see that a train was coming. Graphite would reflect light so at times it appeared to be silver...ish or a dark grey (depending on how long it had been since it was last applied). It was applied to the smoke box and fire box of steam locomotives as a rust preventative. It didn't need to be put on the boilers since the boilers were covered with a jacket that protected them from weather and rust. 

[randgust]

Not all boilers are black, either.

If you go back into the 1800's the 'top end' material was Russia Iron, which was a specialty metal with a lot of force-pounded graphite into it, and it could appear almost silver.   When you see a silver-looking boiler jacket on a model that's an attempt to simulate it, but it's a poor one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_iron

I've done Russia Iron by a successful experiment of Testors Steel and then applying Neolube on top of it and polishing it back out.  This 4-4-0 on the C&NW ended up on my local logging railroad as the 'hot' passenger engine.  But it still had that semi-reflective silver boiler jacket.

Prototype:  https://pixels.com/featured/steam-locomotive-no-605-of-the-chicago-and-north-western-ry-1899-california-views-archives-mr-pat-hathaway-archives.html

Same locomotive in service on the Sheffield & Tionesta, full of dents, mismatched pilot wheels, but still polished:
http://www.randgust.com/S&T4.jpg

Model (Atlas/Microace 4-4-0)

Link:  http://www.randgust.com/S&T404.jpg

[wazzou]

Baldwin painted many of their early logging mallet's boiler jackets Green.

[bbunge]

Colors of steam locomotives can be difficult to lock down since some were painted dark colors that can't be deduced from black and white photos.  Unless there is documentation of the color there were locomotives that more than just black then you might think.   Even color photos from the late steam era can be confusing since a black can take on a blue sheen on a sunny day.  I have never found to good source as to what B&O locomotives were black vs dark blue.  Not to mention practices would vary from shop to shop across some railroads.

Over the years there have been some good discussions about Russian Iron on RYPN.  Here is one that has some good information.  This is of interest to any of us who like to model later 19th century.

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38258

Baldwin apparently painted more locomotives green then you might realize.  A really nice restoration is Baldwin #26 at Steamtown.  Documentation about the color was uncovered in the company's archives and used for the restoration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyAakwli3B4

#26 was the plant shop switcher for many years.

[robert3985]

For the steam engines I paint that are black, I have used several different brands of paint to do this.  There's not much difference between them except some of them are flat, some are glossy and some are somewhere between the two.

I prefer glossy "Loco Black", even for locomotives that I'll be weathering, because I like the interplay between the prototypically glossy black paint and the flat/muddy/dusty/oily/greasy colors that get applied when weathering.

Although my "go to" steam engine black has been Scalecoat 2's "Loco Black" for decades, I'm working on several UP engines now that when done will require painting and I'll be using Tru-Color Paint "Black" on them, which also dries to a really nice, glossy finish...just waiting for decals and weathering.

For the Union Pacific locomotives that were/are painted in the glossy black scheme, the smokeboxes turned/turn a flat shade of light, warm grey very shortly after the engines were fired up and in service again.  The closest color to this is "SP Lettering Grey", but it got pretty dirty quickly, even when Big Boys, Challengers and FEF's were being regularly washed every couple of days, or run in low-effort excursion service.

Photo (1) - Here's an example of a lightly weathered superdetailed brass Big Boy that was painted using Scalecoat 2 "Loco Black", then the firebox and smokebox were painted a flat Polly Scale "SP Lettering Gray"...


I'd venture a guess that any other brand's "SP Lettering Gray" would work just as well as my old Polly Scale paint, as long as it's flat.


Photo (2) - Same engine's tender freshly painted & decaled before any weathering...a nice, rich, glossy "Loco Black"...


Photo (3) - UP 3985 Challenger with "clean" smokebox...looks like SP Lettering Gray to me...


Since I model UP and SP steam engines almost exclusively, I can't speak for other roads' smokebox colors, but...almost ALL manufacturers get UP's smokebox and firebox color dead wrong.

Photo (4) - One more showing a BLI Big Boy with a well-weathered SP Lettering Gray smokebox...which is nowhere near what the stock dark metallic paint looks like...


Doing the smokebox/firebox in "SP Lettering Gray" will vastly improve the realism of any black livery UP steam engine.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Iain]

if you bought a steam locomotive straight out of the baldwin catalog with no modifications, you'd get an olive green paint job with silver accents

[btrain]

You’ll get all kinds of shades with the graphite. Depending how much one stirs the pot you can have speckled silver gray to almost pure black. I can’t remember if there’s additives you can mix in it, which is how you got even white straight silver during the late 50s and 60s steam excursion barnstorming days.

For a few of the steamer repaints I’ve done, Tamiya flat back for the jacket, and Tamiya dark iron or German gray have been my go-to colors on graphited areas. Graphite does flake off over time from being exposed to the drastic heat of the firebox. So if you want to model something worn, beat, or has avoided the backshop, you can use a brown or black wash and maybe lightly fleck some bright orange rust on the area. Photos from railfans showing this are a little rare, but I have some Morning Sun color books of the New York Central, where they didn’t care too much for nice tidy looking engines during the last few years of the 1950s.

[mike_lawyer]

For the smokebox front, Neolube does a nice job.  I have used that along with some weathering to create aa very realistic look.

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  Entirely possible.