I was in the process of figuring out how to put sash windows back into the IRM’s Milwaukee X-5001 caboose when our General Manager asked if we could repaint it for a visit from the Milwaukee Road Historical Association.
A major effort was put forward by the Steam, Freight, Passenger departments involving about 20 volunteers at one time or another to do four cars. The MILW Dynamometer and the Airslide hopper were completely sandblasted and repainted. The steel reefer and the X-5001 business car were brushed, sanded, then cleaned and top coated. Not all completed but they looked great for the event.

buzz_morris -

Look absolutely great!


Les

I think it is a good thing for both parties that the Milwaukee Road Historical Association choose to put their Archives building at the IRM campus.

This, I believe is part of the museum's long term plan to make the campus more of a year round destination.

Maybe someday they will get enough winter visitors to run some streetcars.

Ted Miles, IRM Member

Looks good, Buzz!!! Since there are at least two members of the site here who may be particularly interested, do you have any info on the type of paint and colors used? LOL

The paint for this project is a long story.
We had a little of the “old MILW Reefer orange” left from a paint shop in Mt. Prospect. Coronado Rust Scat Polyurethane Enamel, but they can no longer mix that level of intense orange. In search of deep orange we tried three different sources for the paint.
We were supplied drift cards by the Milwaukee Road Historical Association. Three separate color cards were used for “yellow reefer”, “yellow caboose”, and for the Dynamometer “Outside Body Enamel Orange”.
The reefer and hopper used Sherwin-Williams to match oil based industrial enamel. A close chip was matched or tweaked at the store. The dynamometer crew used a high quality two part PPG PSX 700 custom matched to the outside body card.
That paint was considered too costly for a quick overcoat for the caboose. And S-W was unable to match the caboose color. We still need to do some major repairs to that car so we went with what worked for around $70 a gallon. That was a custom mix I did, a 50/50 mix of industrial safety yellow and Krylon Farm implement Old Kubota Orange. Sounds strange but it actually worked out very close as per the attached pix. Top is the drift card, mid is an old window sash with two coats of MILW Shops caboose paint, and bottom is my custom mix.

What time of day did you take that picture, Buzz? It's a bit later here in PA now but this is WE5562 Orange, WE5900 Orange, and WE5569 Orange from my Chevy fleet fan deck left to right. WE5562 is extremely close to the color the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association folks call "Chrome Yellow"...

Around 3 in the afternoon last month. If I want to be accurate I have tried placing a chip chart next to the sample. Using grey scale and standard colors helps but so far photos just do not do a very good job of matching colors, at lest for me.
BTW most of the paint people had excuses for not getting deep orange. New VOC rules, COVID delivery problems, different suppliers for the tints. Even mixing machines that could break if they tried to use the colors we wanted.

My suggestion would be to get in touch with your preferred brand industrial/marine rep who can get your color samples to the lab to have the colors matched. I’ve been told by both PPG and Sherwin-Williams that they can match any color. I’m sure Axalta and others can do the same. They can prepare and scan the samples with calibrated equipment and tweak the formula from there if necessary.

All that said, in the real world, batches, application rates and coverage varied all over the place - get ‘em in and out as fast as possible, so the actual colors applied could vary a bit. And sometimes those colors might be from a standard but have a different name i.e. you might find them in the Fed. Stds.

Oh yeah…. You can NOT match paint to photos. Period. End of paragraph. You’ll match the photo, not the paint.

Buzz, I'll try a shot around two tomorrow afternoon and see what happens. LOL Unfortunately, the MRHA has no drift card sets available on their "Company Store" page or else I'd send for one. I have had a decent amount of success matching up the colors from the NPRHA set, however.

Those western roads certainly were fond of their oranges and there are quite a few to choose from. Many of them are agricultural implement colors also, Case Orange being a good example. This is an area I plan to pursue further in my Reading thread since using ready-mixed off-the-shelf colors can help cut paint costs considerably. All we need is one code number and the color can be cross-referenced from there.

Most modern digital cameras use the same IC's which are calibrated the same way so we can get pretty darn close these days, even a thousand miles apart. We still need chips and/or samples, though, to get it exactly right.

Hey, and I haven't talked to you for awhile, Eric. How are you doing?

HMMMM, DuPont 60659 Harvest Orange as listed by you, Eric, is also Mack Truck Orange...

http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetail ... pont=60659

I've got that chip here on hand so I'll match it up with the fan deck tomorrow also.

This is classic Ford Mustang Grabber Orange, Buzz...

Ford Mustang Grabber Orange is apparently the equivalent of Case Power Yellow which is available off-the-shelf so I'm hoping this one works out. The DuPont number is 5208 but the GM WE code remains elusive so here's Ford's...

https://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetai ... code=M3659

The best match from the fan deck for Mack Truck Orange is WE5894 so far.

I've got about an hour and a half yet until picture time. LOL

Tough call, Buzz, but that one looks like WE5900 from here. I'll have to see what else I can find out about it. There's Mack Truck Orange up on top...

No. No. No. Not the same. Proprietary chips with different characteristics, different sensitivities, firmware, software, etc. Calibrated means strict adherence to a known standard. Lenses are different. Lighting is different. I’ll bet the monitor (or printer) you’re using is so far out of whack as far as exact color rendering is concerned that it isn’t anywhere close to a laboratory standard - those are hideously expensive comparatively speaking and require constant calibration.

Just, no.

I know my scanner is a piece of crap, Eric, but hey, it was on sale. Once upon a time, Hewlett-Packard made top-shelf equipment but nowadays, it's just another brand name. As far as digital cameras go, I still prefer CCD over CMOS although they do pretty much render color identically.

Buzz, if I just happened to pique your curiosity over this, all you have to do now is bop on over to TSC or Rural King, pick up a five-dollar spray bomb full of Case Power Yellow, spritz some all over your favorite target, and merely check the results.

If you don't, then I might have to. LOL