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Matching pre-grouping paint colours


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Anyone have any good tips on what colours make good approximations of the pre-grouping liveries? I'm hoping for answers in Humbrol, Revell, Games Workshop etc. that I can get cheaply from local shops, rather than Pheonix stuff. If enough people reply, we could have a good reference source here, which would save a lot of Googling when looking for this info! I'm talking anything from SR to pre-grouping and from engines to buildings.

 

My particular interest is in the SECR, so I can recommend:

 

Humbrol 164 makes a reasonably good SECR wartime grey, as used in my model of 751. Matches up pretty well to a Bachmann N class in the same livery. (Someone else on RMweb came up with the idea of using this colour, but I'm afraid I can't credit them as I can't now find the original source! I think they were making an O1 though).

 

post-25124-0-72193800-1513084375_thumb.jpg

 

As a starter, can anyone recommend a good SECR freight wagon grey? I have a 'Dancehall' brake on the go at the moment.

 

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Good idea, and, harking back a few years I know, but the old Airfix magazines used to give "recipes" for mixing colours to get the right camoflage etc, and, seeing as any colour is a mixture of other colours, maybe this could be replicated for railway colours?

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Good idea, and, harking back a few years I know, but the old Airfix magazines used to give "recipes" for mixing colours to get the right camoflage etc, and, seeing as any colour is a mixture of other colours, maybe this could be replicated for railway colours?

 

Ratio's instructions for their Midland carriage kits used to - may still- recommend Humbrol No. 20 with a few drops of black. Now No. 20 is a gloss, so in my experience not so good for brush painting, but my understanding is that SECR carriage lake is a darker shade than the Midland colour, so maybe just add a few more drops of black? For my part, I use now Halfords rattlecan Ford Damask Red. There might be a match for other SECR colours in the Halfords range - which at least has the merit of being widely available.

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If its any help to anyone I matched Tamiya gloss green with a touch of yellow and a hint of blue to Bachmans SECR  Wainwright C simplified green livery .Gloss green was pretty good on its own ,the addition are hardly needed. I did it up as full(ish ) livery using SE finecast decals .I never bother  using commercial mixes .I just mix n match .I  am used to mixing paint by eyeball alone though and even had a relative many centuries ago who was a colour mixer at Windsor and Newton  ....he smugly said  :sungum: :-) ........Magenta is handy for darkening blues and reds .

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You asked me about my SECR brake van on my workbench topic. That one was painted with Phoenix paint, but for my next builds I'm going to try an alternative, Revell tank grey (78). According to my old chart the Humbrol equivalent is no.67.

This was a quick test on a scrap of plastic.

post-6821-0-98286400-1514128690_thumb.jpg

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That looks pretty good actually. I've previously done a van in no. 32, which I think is a bit dark, but it's fine for that as it will be heavily weathered in it's role as a grounded body. Trying to gauge an accurate colour is not easy as the preserved examples vary wildly in colour, from the Bluebell's dancehall being quite light, to their freight wagons being much darker. Assuming that Pheonix's research is better than mine, no. 67 is probably worth a try.

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I think Humbrol 67 is good enough for most pre-grouped wagons. Once the paint had aged and weathered they all ended up a similar dark grey, even Midland wagons turned dark eventually.

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  • 3 weeks later...

:offtopic: (Slightly!)

 

Love your take on 751!

 

Not to do with paint matching, but just wanted to say how much I like it!

Thanks! To bring things slightly back towards on topic, it made a nice easy repaint job to improve my skills without getting too frustrated at trying something way beyond my ability.

 

If you're interested, the build post is here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/110012-secr-terrier-751-build/

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I have just found this thread. As I have said on another thread (can't remember which) this is to some extent a pointless exercise for two reasons.

Firstly the paints were missed from their raw ingredients on pretty much a daily basis, so the chance of wagons painted on different days being exactly the same shade are minimal. I recall heating of someone, having found the 'recipe' for LNER wagon grey, assembling the ingredients and asking a retired painter from Doncaster works to show them how the mixed it. He took a shovelful of one pigment and then a shovelful of another, at which point he was asked exactly how much of each he was taking to achieve the correct shade. He replied that they weren't concerned about that. All the boxes bothered about was the colour of the top link locos.

Secondly the smokey and sulphurous atmosphere of the time had a significant effect on the paints of the time and, in the case of coaches, sunlight affected the varnish.

Variation in the colour of your wagons and coaches is therefore quite prototypical. Anyway, who is around these days to tell you that you've got it slightly wrong?

Jim

Edited by Caley Jim
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There is another issue with wagons: if they are bought from the trade, rather than built in railway workshops, then the builders may use their own mix of grey that isn't even trying to be the customer's preferred shade.

 

Case in point: Hurst Nelson built wagons for the SECR in 1900 and the official photo suggests that they were lighter than the Ashford-built wagons made at the same time. The difference looks too great to be random mixing-error. H-N also picked out the ironwork in black and shaded the lettering, neither of which were on Ashford's painting spec. Scottish pride in the appearance of their products, perhaps. It may have been a standard colour for them.

 

I also suspect that some trade builders, if finishing a small batch for company A, might use the same paint that they'd mixed for a large and simultaneous order from company B.

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There is another issue with wagons: if they are bought from the trade, rather than built in railway workshops, then the builders may use their own mix of grey that isn't even trying to be the customer's preferred shade.

 

Case in point: Hurst Nelson built wagons for the SECR in 1900 and the official photo suggests that they were lighter than the Ashford-built wagons made at the same time. The difference looks too great to be random mixing-error. H-N also picked out the ironwork in black and shaded the lettering, neither of which were on Ashford's painting spec. Scottish pride in the appearance of their products, perhaps. It may have been a standard colour for them.

 

I also suspect that some trade builders, if finishing a small batch for company A, might use the same paint that they'd mixed for a large and simultaneous order from company B.

Re the picking out of the ironwork, was this in the official photo? I can’t imagine any manufacturer going to the extra expense of additional embellishments than specified by the customer.
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Variation in the colour of your wagons and coaches is therefore quite prototypical. Anyway, who is around these days to tell you that you've got it slightly wrong?

Jim

So when two 'identical' tins of Humbrol come out as slightly different shades, they're actually being prototypically accurate rather than inconsistent? Full marks, Humbrol  :sungum:

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Really useful topic for me as a returning beginner with a particular interest in pre-grouping. So far I have been focussing on modelling buildings and used the website http://www.stationcolours.info as reference as well as checking with various pre-grouping societies. My working life involved design for print and as I use acrylics, still find an old Pantone colour formula guide useful when mixing paints - it details the percentages based on the primary colours and black and white. It was recommended that these guides be replaced regularly as the colours do fade with time, but It was quite an expensive item, so I just stored mine away from direct light.

post-33019-0-10521700-1516971201_thumb.jpeg

Edited by Marly51
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My Pantone Colour Guide is for printing CMYK on reflective surfaces such as paper, vinyl, etc. RGB is used in transparent media such as computers, TVs etc. If you have a program like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw, you can select your colour on screen and using the colour picker window - this will bring up the colour details in CMYK, RGB and also the Hex colour code for the web. Sorry, I am very much old school and not really up to date with things these days. I noticed Pantone has online products for colour referencing, but haven’t found any free online guides ☹️

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