Railway colour chart

[Iain]

First let me say that I am an aircraft modeller ...... mainly, so please bear with me!

 

I bought the first two editions of Great British Locomotives and I was rather surprised by the shade of blue on the Mallard. I Googled images and found quite a few in a bright mid blue and others in a shade more like the model.

 

I found reference to the colour card below and obtained a copy, the Garter Blue in which is very close to that on the model; the Crimson Lake closely matches the paint on the 'Coronation' model, too.

 

Looking, in the thread on GBL here, at models of the Mallard which had been repainted, I see that a number appear in the bright mid blue, quite unlike the shade depicted on the card and the GBL model. As an aircraft modeller used to seeing endless discussions of the exact variations in the colours of paint used on aircraft, I am curious to know if the colours on this card are accurate and, if so, why I see the bright mid blue being used so often.

 

I have tried to make the colours as accurate as I can but they do not show the exact shades.

 

[MikeTrice]

I have a similar sample card on order, but I would guess that the colours represented are actual colours as used on the full size locomotives, whereas we are used to seeing scaled down colours on models. The big problem with colour is that it depends on the conditions it is viewed in and whether it is mat, satin or gloss as to its perceived colour. As you say, if you google images of Mallard you will see many variations of apparent shade even though Mallard presumably does not keep getting painted between photos all down to lighting conditions and the camera's reaction to the source colours.