Boy, I get oddball requests here and there.

I've just been contacted by a private car owner/operator who, for a long list of reasons I won't get into here, wants to repaint at least two cars into a blue paint scheme with a maroon/red window band. (He didn't say, but I think there's a movie deal in the works.)

Yeah, it kinda sounds like the Polar Express or the Lionel version, but the clients involved say those particular colors aren't good-- the blue is too drab/gray and the maroon wouldn't quite work with a darker blue (say, B&O Royal Blue).

With the argument that, after this (expensive) paint job they want it to be able to pass off as something closer to a prototype for the decade or two before a repaint, can anyone here come up with a prototype for a deep-blue-with-red/maroon window band passenger scheme? I couldn't think of one off the top of my head......

Not that it should matter, but the cars in question are older cars of the era that could easily pass behind steam, not modern cars like stainless steel or bilevel commuter equipment.

For your consideration, the processor behind a human's retinas doesn't like red and blue of the same intensity next to each other without a separator stripe. Our minds will put in a fuzzy black line to compensate. Because the line isn't really there, we react negatively, often without knowing why. Actually saw that in practice, the C&LC was painting a pair of Osgood-Bradley ex-Erie commuter cars bright blue with a red letter board. The cars looked "wrong". A white separator made them look much "better".

Agreed. Blue and maroon are too close together on the color wheel, thus not complimentary, so they may be more or less garish depending on the shades. You need a separator like a 1" stripe of white or gold which is complimentary to both. A darker maroon with a dark blue may be passable with gold striping.

If you're thinking the Lionel Polar Express colors... Well, ya just can't fix that no matter what color of accent striping you try.

So you don't have to imaginate....