Railway Colour Chart - is there such a thing?

[KeithMacdonald]

I've got a bit confused, bemused and bewildered by all the talk in lots of topics about all the different colours used by different liveries in different eras, in different weather conditions, in different states of weathering.

 

Coincidently, M'Lady is keen on redecorating our house (again!), and she's been busy waving colour charts around, asking me what I thought of all the colours she had chosen. Foolishly I suggested that one of the colours was a cream colour, or perhaps magnolia. No! It was completely different! Couldn't I see the difference? Err, well, no, but I know my place. But it reminded me of the joke about men and women's colour charts.

 

 

An even better version is here:

https://dennisclay.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/colors-18.pdf

 

Anyway, a couple of stray neurons bumped into each other, and I wondered if there should be a colour chart just for railway modellers. I expect someone else will have done that years ago, but attached is my "version 1" attempt (as an Excel spreadsheet). It's very much a work in progress, so all feedback and suggestions are welcome. What needs adding?

 

RailwayColours.xlsx

[JohnR]

Perhaps some shades for weathering as well? 

 

What about a column for Halford spray paints? The current lists seem to use vehicles that are long out of production.

[njee20]

Nice idea. You could host it online somewhere, like Google Sheets, and then people could add it to as they wanted (although they could also delete it and cause general havoc!). 

 

Colour is a difficult one though, it doesn't scale well, and what is 'right' in reality isn't necessarily right when reduced to a scale model, on a different surface, with a different finish.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

Sadly trying to reference by HTML code is futile. It's just numbers without reference to any real world colour.

Using a Pantone reference would have more validity.

 

For an interesting perspective on the accuracy of railway paint it's worth reading page 2 of Precision Paint's catalogue. https://www.phoenix-paints.co.uk/uploads/cat 30 sept 2016 01.10.2016aa.pdf

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, Paul_in_Ricky said:

Sadly trying to reference by HTML code is futile. It's just numbers without reference to any real world colour.

Using a Pantone reference would have more validity.

 

Agreed, in a previous job-life (back in the days pre-computer when we had litho printing and Letraset), every design we did in colour was coded with Pantone numbers before it went to the print shop. Old habits die hard, that's why I put a column for Pantone on the sheet. :-)

 

I would have put some numbers on, but sadly, I've put my Pantome colour book somewhere safe, and now I can't find it. :-(

[57xx]

On 24/10/2019 at 17:19, Paul_in_Ricky said:

For an interesting perspective on the accuracy of railway paint it's worth reading page 2 of Precision Paint's catalogue. https://www.phoenix-paints.co.uk/uploads/cat 30 sept 2016 01.10.2016aa.pdf

 

The most interesting part of that document for me was on the back page:

Quote

On plastic models the enamel can be applied directly to the plastic but in most cases a coat of PQ6 White General Purpose Primer is an advantage. The reason for this is that all Precision Authentic Colour Enamels are colour matched on white cards. Therefore to ensure that the underneath surface does not influence the final shade, applying the enamels to a white surface is best.

 

I've always tended to use grey primer, apart from on roofs or red oxide for brown vehicles.

[KeithMacdonald]

Isn't it always the way, I found the Pantone Colour Book while looking for something else.

 

Rehearsing my excuses in advance:

1) It's an old book, colours have probably faded

2) I'm matching a printed colour to an on-screen colour, and the screen isn't colour calibrated

3) I'm doing this indoors at night with artificial light.

 

So your colour matching might easily be better than mine - all feedback is welcome!

Version 2 attached.

RailwayColours_ver2.xlsx

[Pacific231G]

If precision railway (or anything else) colours match the actual paint colour used on the prototype, how would you allow for distance? A real object seen from twenty feet away looks different from the same object seen close up but  I'm not sure if the difference is just the saturation of the colour- so it could be let down with white- or whether the balance of primary colours shifts with distance as well.  

I've seen many articles discussing this for backscene paining but very few for actual models but i did find this one from a member of an American modelling group.

http://leavenworthmodelersclub.org/member-articles/the-scale-effect-of-color-and-other-considerations/

Mark Gerges who wrote the article is suggesting that for some colours white may not be the best colour to scale them with, it tends to make red into pink for example, I'm wondering what experience others may have. The render colours of some of my buildings do feel a little too intense and I often use a graphics package to make small scale versions of things like enamel sign but I've not been adjusting the saturation to scale them and think maybe I shoudl have been. 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Steamport Southport]

I used to have one. Cherry Paints before it was taken over by Phoenix and was about ten pages thick. Had most of the railway companies and trams/buses. Probably about 500 different colours.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[M.I.B]

The GWR part of your spreadsheet also needs to include "Austerity Brown", "Lake", bufferbeam red, axlebox blue and the other shade of loco Green.

 

"Austerity Brown" is a moveable feast however as  most now believe it was mixed approximately on the day and therefore can vary a bit.  But it is at the orange end of the brown scale.

[M.I.B]

H = Humbrol  R = Revell

 

GW coach oil boxes  - R   SM 350

GW Dark Freight Grey  R 350

GW Freight Grey  R 78   H 67

Carriage Brown  H10  H Auth 100

Faded carriage brown ( great for SIPHONS and brown "freight" stock)  H98

Carriage Cream  H Auth 103   H 103

Engine Green  H Auth 104

  GWR building colours:

 

No 2 Light Stone   R89  R 17

No3 Dark Stone ( 1931 onward) H 65  or H 160

Engineer/Blue Brick  50/50 mix of H77 and H 79

Stone/ Light Cotswold (Sills and lintels) H121  H 71

Brick   R37 + H 73 + H 100  all mixed but slightly vary the mix for individual bricks

[KeithMacdonald]

On 29/10/2019 at 21:52, Pacific231G said:

If precision railway (or anything else) colours match the actual paint colour used on the prototype, how would you allow for distance? A real object seen from twenty feet away looks different from the same object seen close up but  I'm not sure if the difference is just the saturation of the colour- so it could be let down with white- or whether the balance of primary colours shifts with distance as well.  

I've seen many articles discussing this for backscene paining but very few for actual models but i did find this one from a member of an American modelling group.

http://leavenworthmodelersclub.org/member-articles/the-scale-effect-of-color-and-other-considerations/

Mark Gerges who wrote the article is suggesting that for some colours white may not be the best colour to scale them with, it tends to make red into pink for example, I'm wondering what experience others may have. The render colours of some of my buildings do feel a little too intense and I often use a graphics package to make small scale versions of things like enamel sign but I've not been adjusting the saturation to scale them and think maybe I shoudl have been.

 

Thanks.

 

I'm wondering if white isn't suitable what should be used instead? Shades of very pale grey perhaps?

[KeithMacdonald]

On 03/01/2020 at 10:50, M.I.B said:

The GWR part of your spreadsheet also needs to include "Austerity Brown", "Lake", bufferbeam red, axlebox blue and the other shade of loco Green.

 

"Austerity Brown" is a moveable feast however as  most now believe it was mixed approximately on the day and therefore can vary a bit.  But it is at the orange end of the brown scale.

 

Thanks, I'll try and find some colour matches.

[KeithMacdonald]

1 hour ago, M.I.B said:

H = Humbrol  R = Revell

 

GW coach oil boxes  - R   SM 350

GW Dark Freight Grey  R 350

GW Freight Grey  R 78   H 67

Carriage Brown  H10  H Auth 100

Faded carriage brown ( great for SIPHONS and brown "freight" stock)  H98

Carriage Cream  H Auth 103   H 103

Engine Green  H Auth 104

  GWR building colours:

 

No 2 Light Stone   R89  R 17

No3 Dark Stone ( 1931 onward) H 65  or H 160

Engineer/Blue Brick  50/50 mix of H77 and H 79

Stone/ Light Cotswold (Sills and lintels) H121  H 71

Brick   R37 + H 73 + H 100  all mixed but slightly vary the mix for individual bricks

 

Thanks, I've added them to an updated version of the spreadsheet, now attached.

 

Some other additions are thanks to something else I just stumbled on - Station Colours Info,

https://www.stationcolours.info/

 

Quote

This web site is a resource for railway modelers wanting information about the liveries used on British railway buildings. I am a professional architectural model maker specializing in railway buildings, so I am probably in a better position than most people to collate this information and make it available to fellow modelers.

 

It's a lovely website with the benefit of colour pictures of the real things.

GWR things: https://www.stationcolours.info/great-western-railway/

Southern things: https://www.stationcolours.info/southern-railway/

Buildings: https://www.stationcolours.info/model-buildings/

 

RailwayColours_ver3.xlsx

 

I wish I could find the author's name to thank him personally - does anyone know who it is?

[Pacific231G]

18 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Thanks.

 

I'm wondering if white isn't suitable what should be used instead? Shades of very pale grey perhaps?

That's what I'm wondering. 

Any decent landscape artist can probably explain it but I suspect that if you applied chip matched colours straight out of the tin to a model it probably wouldn't look right. The pigments that would produce an authentic finish on a full size loco would be too intense for a small scale model. 

 

Aerial perspective- sometimes known as atmospheric perspective- “Colours become weaker in proportion to their distance from the person who is looking at them.” was described by Leonardo da Vinci who coined the term   For distant scenes colours do shift as well because wavelengths of light are scattered differently by particles in the air.  towards blue for darker objects and towards red for lighter objects. That's probably more relevant to painting backscenes than actual models and it also depends on the light. On a dull day it can be far harder to differentiate distant objects than on a sunny day as the colours.

There's a good simple, and illustrated, explanation of aerial perspective here

https://www.britannica.com/art/aerial-perspective

Edited January 7, 2020 by Pacific231G

[KeithMacdonald]

39 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

There's a good simple, and illustrated, explanation of aerial perspective here

https://www.britannica.com/art/aerial-perspective

 

Nice. How apt that the Turner painting they use as an example is "Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway"

 

Quote

The 19th-century British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner made perhaps the boldest and most ambitious use of aerial perspective among Western artists.

 

If only we could get him to paint our background wall scenes for us!

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Nice. How apt that the Turner painting they use as an example is "Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway"

 

 

If only we could get him to paint our background wall scenes for us!

Tricky without a tardis, but we can study them in galleries and reproductions.

[Hal Nail]

20 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Tricky without a tardis

If I had a tardis I could get the whole of cornwall in 7mm in the garden shed. And still have room for k9. Awesome.

[KeithMacdonald]

The Liquitex acrylic paint range looks like it's very useful for broad-sweep painting, like scenery, backgrounds, base layers, etc.

 

https://www.liquitex.com/row/products/basics/range/colors/

 

Can anyone offer suggestions for the best matches from the Liquitex acrylic pain range to our chosen subject? Or their favourites?

 

Pending responses, I'll collate those into a "Version 4" of the Excel file.

 

 

[57xx]

On 06/01/2020 at 22:00, M.I.B said:

No3 Dark Stone ( 1931 onward) H 65  or H 160

 

Humbrol 65 is coming up as aircraft blue. Is that a typo?

 

[KeithMacdonald]

2 hours ago, 57xx said:

 

Humbrol 65 is coming up as aircraft blue. Is that a typo?

 

 

Could be.

 

Is Humbrol 160 a good match for GWR building colours (No3 Dark Stone)?

 

 

[57xx]

Personally I think it is too dark/browny coloured. It's hard to tell from a PDF on a monitor rather than seeing actual paint but I think H225 Middle Stone is closer, albeit maybe a bit light. H234 maybe a good one too, H121 is not too far off Light Stone either. All subjective and IMO.

 

 

[M.I.B]

No idea where the H65 comes from if it is wrong.  What colour is Revell 65?

 

"Deep Bronze Green"

 

 

Ignore H65 and R 65    as an option then.  I will investigate where i got that info from.

Edited January 12, 2020 by M.I.B

[Andy Keane]

On 06/01/2020 at 23:46, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Thanks, I've added them to an updated version of the spreadsheet, now attached.

 

Some other additions are thanks to something else I just stumbled on - Station Colours Info,

https://www.stationcolours.info/

 

 

It's a lovely website with the benefit of colour pictures of the real things.

GWR things: https://www.stationcolours.info/great-western-railway/

Southern things: https://www.stationcolours.info/southern-railway/

Buildings: https://www.stationcolours.info/model-buildings/

 

RailwayColours_ver3.xlsx 14.54 kB · 26 downloads

 

I wish I could find the author's name to thank him personally - does anyone know who it is?

A slightly related question - I am currently building a 4mm model of Helston loco shed (see Helston Revisited on RMweb) which was built of stone with yellow brick edgings and arches - becuase the Helston goods shed survives and was built the same way I have good colours to match the outside but am wondering about the inside of the shed. Would this have been like the outside (maybe dirtier) or would GWR have painted the interior and if so in what colours? Any thoughts most welcome. I just want the view into the shed through the main track doors to be roughly correct.

[Andy Keane]

Also what about the woodedn vents on a GWR engine shed roof. Obviously they would tend to be pretty grubby but what colour would they have been painted originally? Dark stone?