ATSF "yellow"

[ATSF_Ron]

I decided to pull out some diesels today and give them some time on the rails.  I have several in the Kodachrome merger scheme of the 80s.  Three examples are shown below.  What I find really odd is the SD45 and SD40-2 are both Kato products, but the shades of yellow are clearly NOT the same.  My apologies if this has already been covered, but I'm wondering if the two yellows are prototypically different or if that's just a gaffe on Kato.  Clearly the Athearn F45 is the lightest shade.  I also wonder which of the three is correct.








These are all very low run time, as new in the box models.  They'll be getting a decent coat of weathering anyway, so the yellow color variation won't be an issue for me.

ATSF_Ron

[OldEastRR]

Just look at the various Armor Yellow shades KATO put on their various UP passenger cars & engines through the years. "It's sun-faded!"

[tehachapifan]

Paint colors on MRR equipment is always a wildcard. I'm fairly certain manufacturers must pull up online photos and base their color matching on that, when so many variables come into play that can make the color look way different than it does in person. BNSF orange is a great example. Some online photos look like what Kato did (almost neon) and other photos of the same unit look like what Atlas or FVM did (dark, muted and kind of reddish). The yellow stripes and lettering color looks way different between Kato and Atlas BNSF units too, but you can find online photos of the same unit that make either one seem correct. Film, if used, can also have a sometimes-drastic effect on how a color appears.

Kato's recent Surfliner release, while beautiful, also seems off to me as the blue looks way too dark and purple (on the cars anyway). But that's the way a lot of blues appear on my screen and I'm sure many others. I recently posted pics of some 3D printed Surfliner cars I painted that are not purple at all (they are very much just a nice blue) but they look purple and much darker on the computer screen.

An added factor that comes into play is lighting and what adjustments are or aren't made for lighting. What looks correct out in bright sunlight may very well not look correct at all in the layout room under layout lighting. I believe this is the case with the Kato Surfliners. The dark purple becomes much closer to what I consider the correct blue outside in direct sunlight.

There's also the factor of age of paint on the prototype with regards to fading, oxidation etc. Surfliner cars have definitely become a lighter and lighter blue as time goes on, but I'm not sure they were ever purple. That said, the new Chargers seem to have a more purple color to them as compared to the cars (as do the Superliner repaints)....at least that's what it looks like on the computer screen.

....and, yes, I also have a small fleet of Kato locos in ATSF paint, pretty much all with a completely different color yellow.

[ATSF_Ron]

Tehachapi fan, I remember that post on the surf liner cars. Great job on those, BTW. I think there was also a prototype video posted on that thread if I’m not mistaken. Even within the same train there are color variations on the surf liner cars!


And yep, we’ll just say the variations are sunlight fade. 😁

[randgust]

That yellow is really subjective.

It did tend to fade out.  I made my 'standard yellow' on my ATSF repaints Floquil Reefer Yellow.  When that died out I used Badger ATSF yellow, but frankly that was too vivid except for a fresh paint.  The Floquil was less vibrant, yellow, but looking slightly faded.

I've seen Intermountain units that were painted with almost an orange tint, that's just wrong.  But remember the FT's had a different palate, as well as the pre-1960 catwhisker schemes.

Blue is even worse.  ATSF blue is really dark, not a vivid blue at all.  Floquil got that right, Scalecoat in the day.

The reds are the worst, period, and it depends on the era.  Remember ATSF painted the red OVER yellow on the pre-'72 paint schemes, so as it weathered out it began to take an orange tint.  (exception:  GE u28CG's)  I used Testors Chevy Engine Red, still like that.   In the Super Fleet era, I honestly don't think they undercoated with yellow, as it ages, it just fades and gets darker, and ultimately, junkyard dog ugly.  And the GE paint is worse than EMD paint.  And I swear Cleburne did not put clearcoat over anything to stall out sun fade.

I think their colors were pretty standardized, but the impacts of sun and weathering put shading all over.

[RRRover]

I seldom post, but this topic is near and dear as i work on my own loco and car fleet (BN and UP mostly). I lived within a half hour of the Santa Fe shops in San Bernardino CA for about eight years and I used to write a column for the NMRA Bulletin called Wet Paint Prototypes - all about new railroad paint schemes back in the early 90s. From experience I noted there's no such thing as an exact color match for the reasons Tehachapifan notes. On ATSF, quite a bit of the color differences also crept in when EPA or SCAQMD (CA air quality agency) required changes to the paints allowed in the shops. The more environmentally friendly paints tended to fade faster - hence the lighter yellow. Although I don't have them scanned at present, at one time in the 80s ATSF ran four freshly painted F45s on a train through the Tehachapis and each unit was subtly different in yellow and red hues upon close inspection. After a year the yellows had faded. Same went for the normal yellow Warbonnet units. Units painted at other system shops held up better, such as the SD45s that went to WC and other secondary users. Note the yellows on the first two units in this image. https://flic.kr/p/7KmKry

[randgust]

Wow, that's exactly what I'd get if the first unit was painted in Badger ATSF yellow and the second unit was painted in Floquil Reefer Yellow.

It's not Santa Fe, it's BNSF, but the "BNSF Peaches" were a locally-grown disaster when GE subcontracted out painting to Thunderport (Corry, PA), specified Imron, but realized much to late Thunderport was owned by Glyptol, and they used that orange paint.  The fade and shade was so bad that GE had to do warranty repaints, as by that time Thunderport skipped and left town with GE holding the bag.  Only the concrete pad remains.

So the 'basic color' was identical, but if you've ever used Imron, that stuff is highly VOC, tough as nails, and darn expensive.  Clearcoat it and you've got 20 years.   Anything else like the new VOC stuff?  I'm skeptical.   So yes, absolutely, the VOC regs changed everything.

[peteski]

Yet another thread confirming what I have been saying all along that accurately matching a piece of model RR equipment to prototype is pretty much impossible, unless you select to choose a specific piece of rolling stock, at a specific date, and you can actually observe that specific 1:1 piece of equipment in person while coming up with your custom paint mix.

Not only paint fades, different formulas and brands are used by different paint shops, and are painted over different base colors.  Color photos or computer images also have the color skewed by the ambient lighting when the image was taken, and of course the color accuracy of the computer screen or in the old days color film and photo paper.

Then there is also a "scale color effect" some modelers subscribe to where the model's color saturation is related to its scale.

I always roll my eyes when someone is hell bent in finding the ideal accurate color.  I also understand the desire to for example have a perfectly matched color on all the cars in a passenger consist. It looks really nice running on a layout, but it is not too realistic (if one actually strives for prototypical realism).

[dem34]

Yet another thread confirming what I have been saying all along that accurately matching a piece of model RR equipment to prototype is pretty much impossible, unless you select to choose a specific piece of rolling stock, at a specific date, and you can actually observe that specific 1:1 piece of equipment in person while coming up with your custom paint mix.

Not only paint fades, different formulas and brands are used by different paint shops, and are painted over different base colors.  Color photos or computer images also have the color skewed by the ambient lighting when the image was taken, and of course the color accuracy of the computer screen or in the old days color film and photo paper.

Then there is also a "scale color effect" some modelers subscribe to where the model's color saturation is related to its scale.

I always roll my eyes when someone is hell bent in finding the ideal accurate color.  I also understand the desire to for example have a perfectly matched color on all the cars in a passenger consist. It looks really nice running on a layout, but it is not too realistic (if one actually strives for prototypical realism).

Yeah this is why I get close and leave it at that.
I only try to be specific when when doing a specific locomotive. Freight cars I just get in the ballpark with a rattle can.
And of course you do a few models you notice when there will be shifts. Like generally a weathered black locomotive is going to look like a dark grey. A Yellow or white car will either fade or get encrusted with road dust so its a coinflip if its lighter or darker.

[nkalanaga]

I've had the same issues with BN, their predecessors, and Amtrak Platinum Mist.  In the latter case, trying to find a spray paint that matched it (it wasn't SILVER), I looked at multiple photos of Amtrak smoothside cars.  I gave up after finding a picture with three cars, coupled together, in sunlight, in three very different shades of silver-gray.  None were more than three years old, as the photo was taken in 1974, so it shouldn't have been all "aging".

[Simon D.]

Interesting remarks from Tim Shackleton, one of the UK’s foremost weatherers in an article on the 2mmFS site:

https://www.2mm.org.uk/articles/Before%20and%20After/index.htm
[/size]
[/size]‘white is essential in 2mm work because colours are so much paler and more subdued compared with 4mm, let alone 7mm. Colour is as much subject to scale considerations as dimension and proportion and to my eye most proprietary paints are balanced out to something around 1:48 scale, popular with the military modellers and also of course the American O gauge standard. All shop-bought colours therefore need toning down by the addition of white or more correctly a pale beige, otherwise they look far too intense.’

[peteski]

Yes, I mentioned the "scale color effect" earlier in this thread and February in another thread about color matching.  Not everybody subscribes to that theory.  More info is available here.

[ATSF_Ron]

All good stuff, guys!  Thanks for sharing...

[thomasjmdavis]

In the case of ATSF, as previously mentioned above, the changes in paint formulas brought on by improved chemistry over the years, and government requirements on lead and VOCs, caused some changes in color. 
With yellow, just as on a model, in real life, the tone of yellow you end up with varies greatly with the color of the primer under it.

But to my mind, the variation most often overlooked is color temperature in the environment.  That is, direct sunlight has a higher color temp (it is more 'blue', from a higher percentage of UV) than a cloudy sky, which in turn is higher than a room lit with 4000 deg. LEDs, which is higher color temp than old incadescent light bulbs.  What makes this important in modeling is that if the model maker (or painter) can match the color of a car or loco direct from Duco  or Dulux paint chips, and, if you take the model outdoors, it will look like the prototype in the photo.  In your basement, however, it looks dark, or in the case of yellow, too brown or orange.  Some model companies try to compensate for this by lightening the color, or shifting the hue, so that  when it is under incandescent light, it looks like the prototype color did in sunshine.

Note also that outdoors, what is being reflected by the painted surface is likely blue or cloudy sky, not a white ceiling, and this also impacts the color we perceive.

I proved this to myself with a loco that when i received it was clearly "wrong".  That is, until I took it outside, and it was suddenly "right".
This may be the case with the three locos in the OP- one may have been a match to a color chip, but for modelers was too dark. The "lemon" yellow might be an attempt to get it to look like the yellow in some photo, under incandescent light, the other is a compromise between the two.

Ironically, high color temperature light (bluer) is referred to as "cool light" and lower color temp (more red) is referred to as "warm" light by artists and designers, and lighting manufacturers.

[chuck geiger]

I am loving this some discussion over "western roads" in place of different variations of the C&O cat. lol