A little birdie recently informed me that the Pennsy's cabin cars were actually painted red, and by red, I mean caboose red, prior to 1920.

I'm not sure I trust said bird though, and am looking for corroborating evidence.

Does anyone know of a good source for knowledge of the subject?

Any actual color reference I can find is for after that point.

Ref: https://jbritton.pennsyrr.com/index.php/tpm/115-steel-cabin-car-painting-lettering

Seems prior to 7/9/1915 they were likely red, something on the line of what’s generally known as “Swift Red” which is bright. After that they were specified to be “Freight Car Color” of which there are three shades depending on what time frame. Cars ran with their colors until they had to be painted when shopped so those dates aren’t absolute for the color changes. In 1965 they changed the spec to “Focal Orange”.

Yep. That document is the little birdie I'm talking about.

But I don't know what its source for that was.

I trust Jerry to generally be right about this type of thing, but I'd like some sort of corroboration.

Last century, I was involved in restoring a PRR caboose and I found that my local hobby shop had "PRR caboose red" in stock in small bottles. We painted a piece of metal with several coats and took it to our local paint store where it was scanned. Sadly, the president of the organization decide that they were semi gloss and a few weeks after painting the caboose, it looked like primer.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Contact the PRRTHS. Bruce Smith is on the paint committee. Email available on the society contact page: http://www.prrths.com/newprr_files/newPRRSocietyContacts.htm. If you’re really lucky, you may be able to get some samples for scanning.

That's a great point. Thank you!

Interesting. Was it a real "red" red? Or more oxide?

My color list (see sticky at the top of the thread list) has the scanned Munsell numbers for the freight car red, four versions, from PRRTHS. The paint color labs should be able to use them. After 1915 you can use the 1930s numbers. I don’t have anything prior to 1915. Typically, Munsell will get you close but it would be nice if you had a sample for comparison. Differences between scanners, software and production equipment may cause some variation. PRRTHS may have samples available for direct scanning by your supplier.

Early PRR bought pigment in bulk and mixed their own paint so there could be variations between batches. There are so many variables that if you get real close to the target drift card, that’s good enough. So don’t sweat it too badly.

I wouldn’t use model paints as a reference. Provenance is suspect, names aren’t necessarily accurate and some, maybe most paints are lighter in shade to compensate for indoor lighting. Seems you can’t get detailed info from model paint manufacturers on how they came up with the colors.

Thanks to the PRR Groups.IO group, I turned this up.

It's the corroboration I was looking for. I wanted to close the loop for anyone following along or who stumbles on this thread in the future.

That’s interesting. Lead chromate (yellow) + lead oxide (red) in those percentages would make an orange color. That confirms that the hearsay over the years is just that. Nice find. I wonder if a lab can use those percentages to come up with a modern pigment formulation?

I don't think you can make that assumption without knowing the hiding characteristics of each pigment. Note the common name is SCARLET lead chromate. I suspect the final color is more red than orange.

Question. Since something up thread seems to indicate that the color spec. changed in 1915, which is well before the requirement that cabooses have steel underframes, are there any preserved cars that can correctly be painted this color?

Rabbit hole time. As best as I can find, the “modern” equivalent is “pigment red 104”. This is a very bright red leaning ever so slightly towards orange. I’d describe it as a hot red. These lead based pigments are still produced primarily in India and China. Dennis was correct about the yellow coverage hence the red being much more dominant though less in proportion. Ya learn something new every day.

So PRR was using Focal Orange some 50 years before they adopted Focal Orange.

I always felt Cabeese, Cabin Cars, Vans, Waycars etc. should be visible, with or without block signals.

Phil Mulligan

It would be hard to make a comparison between Focal Orange and Scarlet Red Chromate without having samples in hand. Based on the few photos of fresh Focal Orange cabin cars out there, I’d guess that they were close to PR104 but maybe not quite as red. Don’t take that to the bank. I’d wait to see what the PRR experts say. As I’ve always preached, you can’t go by photos or models and I could be somewhat off on the PR104 based on current proportions of chromate to oxide. You can find a lot of images of raw PR104 pigment (none are color balanced so they’re all over the place) but I’d tend to think that once you add in the binder and whatever else to make paint, the color isn’t going to be as “hot”. There’s a lot of “buts” in those sentences so more research is required.

Here's the December, 1974 PRRT&HS Keystone on Cabin Car colors and lettering:

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/fileSendA ... _paint.pdf

Phil Mulligan