Standardisation of colours for model railways

[Robin Brasher]

There is often a colour clash when running trains made by different manufacturers or even by the same manufacturer. For instance my Maunsell green Wrenn R1 does not match the Bachmann birdcage coaches.

 

I have usually found Tri-ang going through to Hornby to be good with colour matching although there are some colour variations with that firm.

 

If colours were standardised like couplings and wheel standards it would improve the appearance of model railways that run in a specific period using rolling stock from a variety of manufacturers.

 

I hope that the forthcoming definitive Southern Livery Register will help manufacturers achieve this aim.

[Oldddudders]

Hope springs eternal! That R1 does not look like any shade of green I would expect from the SR. It's positively pastel sage. And Hornby has disappointed many by releasing its Maunsell corridor coaches in the same shade of green for Malachite and BR(S) green. The matt finish also does the shade no favours in either era. 

 

At least adherents of other Big 4 companies find the same problem. 

[Chamby]

That model locomotive would be between 30-40 years old, most likely.

 

It doesn’t look like it was in a prototypical livery even when new!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...If colours were standardised like couplings and wheel standards it would improve the appearance of model railways ...

 That's a recipe for disaster. There is no formal standardisation of couplers and wheel standards in OO whatsoever. The couplers have a host of variations of outwardly similar form, but deviating in detail with impact on reliability. While the NMRA's RP25 profile is quite widely adopted, there are recently tooled OO products that do not conform...

[brushman47544]

I think some - slight - variations in colour is actually quite prototypical, but I do agree it would be good if there was a common understanding of what the actual colours should be. We've not just seen it with greens - Blue/Grey has seen different interpretations of monastral blue, which is just one colour as opposed to the range of different greens from Maunsell olive to BR(S) green.

 

But I think it's a vain hope - on the Dapol Class 122 thread Chris Leigh (dibber 25) has said that he had provided input as regards the green colour to be used on the green+whiskers version and said that he and Dapol had chosen the colour closest available to what looked correct. If one factory is unable to produce any colour as specified, what hope is there for standardisation across a range of factories.

Edited December 1, 2017 by brushman47544

[New Haven Neil]

Having been involved with specifying colours for commission builds, the only way to deal with China in this respect is by the use of established colour charts - Pantone in the case of the factory we were dealing with.  So close-ish is a good as you are going to get, they won't mix a colour to your own spec.  Edit - presuming you really know what that colour is of course.  REALLY know.....

 

The alternative is to pay three times as much for your models when they are made in the UK.  Your choice....

Edited December 1, 2017 by New Haven Neil

[Oldddudders]

 If one factory is unable to produce any colour as specified, what hope is there for standardisation across a range of factories.

 

Quite right. With production the other side of the world, we would have to pay twice as much for our models if we wanted an on-site rep supervising such things, and I'm not clear whether that would even be feasible or effective. 

[adb968008]

Doesn’t seem to be a problem in Germany.

I’ve found DB red, Grey, Green and of course Black to be very close, if not identical but definitely consistent across different manufacturers.

 

In these modern days of digital colours in Hex and Pantone’s this should be an issue any more.

Edited December 1, 2017 by adb968008

[DavidH]

Dealing with railways in a time when there was no such thing as pantones, where different works on the same railway often used slightly different colours, where the amount of varnishing/revarnishing (on the Southern) and weathering affected the colour ... Why would you want all the colours to match perfectly?

[Andy Y]

For instance my Maunsell green Wrenn R1 does not match the Bachmann birdcage coaches.

 

 

I think you could have chosen a more relevant example!

 

In this month's BRM I chunter about the differences between Hornby and Bachmann's Mk1 coaches in B/G.

 

[Dunsignalling]

Dealing with railways in a time when there was no such thing as pantones, where different works on the same railway often used slightly different colours, where the amount of varnishing/revarnishing (on the Southern) and weathering affected the colour ... Why would you want all the colours to match perfectly?

Varnishing and revarnishing were by no means confined to the Southern...........

[MikeParkin65]

The only way this is ever going to happen is if you paint your own stock. Modellers of a higher calibre than me already do that to magnificent effect. I'm quite happy to accept what I can purchase with the proviso that if the model is too far out from either the prototype or other models in my collection I wont buy it. Dapols turquoise instead of BR blue Class 29 would fall into that category.

 

Put it this way, I am happily keeping all of my old model Hornby Duchesses in 'maroon' although each is a different shade. Even the two new maroon Duchesses (46256 and 46229) look different due to the latter being varnished though I am certain they share the same base colour.

[Chamby]

I think you could have chosen a more relevant example!

 

In this month's BRM I chunter about the differences between Hornby and Bachmann's Mk1 coaches in B/G.

 

Hornby_and_Bachmann.jpg

But which is best?

 

FIGHT!!!

 

(With apologies to Harry Hill).

[olivegreen]

Even if manufacturers could achieve the degree of utopia that Robin Brasher would wish (I'm not sure that utopia can have degrees, but you get my meaning!), another well-worn argument would then arise as to whether the colours agreed upon were the 'real' colours, or those adjusted for scale, distance and the host of other elements that have been discussed in these threads.

 

As to comparing that Wrenn horror (by today's standards) with the Bachmann birdcages….hmmm!

[BG John]

I think you could have chosen a more relevant example!

 

In this month's BRM I chunter about the differences between Hornby and Bachmann's Mk1 coaches in B/G.

 

Hornby_and_Bachmann.jpg

Is it Hornby or Bachmann who employ colour blind people to select colours? Most people can tell the different between yellow and red .

[pete_mcfarlane]

It doesn’t look like it was in a prototypical livery even when new!

 

R1s were always painted black in SR days, rather than green. 

[Andy W]

Is it Hornby or Bachmann who employ colour blind people to select colours? Most people can tell the different between yellow and red .

Is this subtle irony that's gone right over my head?

If not, a general service First Open was supposed to have a yellow band (and the model does), dedicated catering vehicles ranging from all-seat Restaurant First Opens through cars with buffet counters and/or kitchens and some seating to all-kitchen or kitchen/buffet cars were supposed to have a red band (only over the section used for catering if the seating was common user). Again the model does.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Andy W

[royaloak]

If the various shades of yellow used on the ends of our current 12 inch to the foot trains are anything to go by then every (model) shade is probably correct on one train or another.

[BG John]

Is this subtle irony that's gone right over my head?

If not, a general service First Open was supposed to have a yellow band (and the model does), dedicated catering vehicles ranging from all-seat Restaurant First Opens through cars with buffet counters and/or kitchens and some seating to all-kitchen or kitchen/buffet cars were supposed to have a red band (only over the section used for catering if the seating was common user). Again the model does.

I don't do "subtle irony". I do full blown in yer face silliness and idiocy

 

Andy was comparing the livery of two coaches that are in different liveries, because they are different classes of coach. So how are we supposed to know if the red and yellow are the correct shades?

 

To be vaguely serious, the red and yellow bands were the bit that hit me when I looked at the photo, and distracted me from any subtle difference there may be in the blues and greys. To me, they're so bright that they affect my perception of the other colours.

[adb968008]

It shouldn’t be that hard to get Blue and Grey correct.

 

The livery was standard, and even by 1970’s paint quality was fairly consistent.. if blue/greys were different it was largely due to weathering/aging or bleaching.

Similarly Blue/Grey has never left us, there’s still rolling stock now in this livery that’s not been repainted in decades, in more than one case stored undercover for decades.. 31004 / 84001 comes to mind, as does various coaches etc. I’m sure original tins still lurk in several places.

Edited December 1, 2017 by adb968008

[davetheroad]

To put it cynically it may not be in the manufacturers interest to have matched colours. Take those B/G coaches as an example.  They don't match? Well don't run a mixed rake then, buy them all from us!. I recently bought a 12 coach rake of B/G Mk1's from Bachmann at twice as much as the equivalent would have been for Hornby Railroad but the Hornby range was incomplete.

 

It goes further than that. Those Bacchie Mk1's are too heavy for my Hornby Class 40 to pull. Why? when I went to considerable trouble removing the weights it almost solved the problem. They still have more rolling resistance than Hornby's. Cynical me would say because Bachmann would suggest that you buy one of their super heavy locos that can pull the rake.

[The Johnster]

Even I'm not that cynical, davetheroad.  I would suggest buying one make of coach for a rake, with the make not being the most important factor unless you are exceptionally brand loyal.  There will be minor differences in finish, profile, ride height, level of detail, 'set' of windows and degree of window-flushness, and probably couplings and wheel profiles as well; a 'one make rake' will always look better than a mix.

 

This is before livery is even considered!

[Forester]

If there is one thing worse than non-standardisation of colours it would be to standardise on the wrong colours!

 

On balance, considering how little agreement on colour there is here, I prefer manufacturers to make their own calls on colour and I will continue to include colour among the many other issues of accuracy I use to decide if a model is worth purchasing.

 

I don't want to find I can no longer model Southern because all the RTR manufacturers have gone for the wrong colour green, thanks

[TheSignalEngineer]

Two vehicles could come out of the same paint shop together and depending on the services they ran and how maintained they could look very different after a few weeks. WR washing machines were notorious paint faders and strippers. 

Also (IIRC) BR Blue was actually changed sometime during its life as the original paint formula was found to change shade when exposed to the atmosphere. As for maroon used on the Westerns and Warships, it could look very different from maroon Mk1s.

 

 

 

I don't want to find I can no longer model Southern because all the RTR manufacturers have gone for the wrong colour green, thanks

 

Can you remember which is the right one? I travelled a few times on the Southern Region from when stuff hadn't been repainted after Nationalisation up to the end of steam, but I'm damned if I could tell which was right from several samples. The Southern cycle of paint/varnish/varnish/varnish/paint over a 10 year period wouldn't help in producing consistent shades either.

[dibber25]

Hasn't this been gone over ad nauseum? 

We all see colours and shades differently so there is no 'right' or 'wrong' colour unless you use black where it should be grey or blue where it should be green, for instance.

What looks right to me won't necessarily look right to you. It follows that what looks right to a guy at Hornby won't necessarily be the same as what looks right to a guy at Bachmann or Dapol or Oxford.

You can't use the appropriate full-size shades because they will look wrong to everyone because they need to be 'scaled down'.

You can't use Pantone or other computer/print-based colours because paint ranges are different.

You have to use the paint types/colour charts which are available to your company's particular Chinese manufacturer.

There were usually variations in the shades of the real things due to different paint batches, fading, and weathering. 

Manufacturers endeavour to make their own models match (I've seen Bachmann colour specs many times and they are absolutely standardised) but they can't be expected to match rival company's products.

(CJL)