Howdy all,

Has anyone done the research to find the most appropriate imron paint codes for GN Orange, yellow, and green for mid century passenger car paintwork? We are looking at rehabbing our GN baggage car for service and do not want to have to recreate work already done. Thanks to all!

Bet,

Stathi

Dupont has (or had) historical paint numbers on file. I got NYC numbers from them several years ago.

Is Imron still available in the U.S.? You can't get it here in Canada anymore. Environmental issues.

Imron is still available here in Washington and is our preferred paint for metal coverage. I am aware of the historic color system but we are looking for current paint numbers for the hues in question. Thanks for your comments!

Best,

Stathi

The Minnesota Transportation Museum has painted two cars in Mid-Century GN paint using Imron. The first is GN 1213 (painted in 2008) and the second is GN A-11 (painted in 2009). (Both still look great, by the by!)

Our paint guru supplied me with links to his website that documents the work he did and includes Imron paint codes:

Exterior paint codes for 1213 and A-11:
http://www.erixrailcar.com/restoration/2008/#Mar

Interior paint codes from 2011:
http://www.erixrailcar.com/restoration/2011/#Feb

And A-11 soon after being painted:


Ryan Heath
Minneapolis, MN

Ryan, that is just what we were looking for, thanks!

What a fantastic website!

Glad you were able to get the paint info needed for the GN cars.

We contacted Dupont for information about some historic (early 1970s) paint a few weeks ago and were told they got rid of those old records.

Paul

Paul Krueger
Seattle, WA

Yeah, since George Rust retired/passed away, Dupont does not seem to be interested in historic color research. They basically tell you, "send us a sample, and we'll match it." That's great, unless you don't happen to have a sample.

What's worse, they list colors with names that appear to be useful, Soo Line Maroon in my case, but with formulation dates that indicate they are just someone else's recent match to a sample, but no record as to who, or what that sample actually WAS.

Dupont sold their coatings division. The new company is call Axalta. At least some of the records live on under the new corporate umbrella.

Richard Anderson
Northwest Railway Museum

My comments refer to several years ago, while it was DuPont Performance Coatings. They may have had lots of stuff, and still may, for all I know; they just weren't very interested in looking for it. And since this was strictly a historical documentation project that wasn't going to result in a sale, I didn't push it too far.

When they say "send us a color, we'll match it", they are kicking back onto you the tedious and expensive task of color research. There are specialists who do just that.

I see red every time somebody talks about "paint codes" and here's why. They are based on particular pigments from particular manufacturing processes. When those pigments go out of style, the entire color specification system goes down the toilet. Pantone 300 is not eternal. I laugh when I see nations specify their flags in it. What is eternal is the Munsell system or CIELAB because it is derived from absolutes. It's not a brand like Pantone, it's a unit of measure like Watt.

In hindsight while Rust was still around, it would've been nice to pool some money together and pay DuPont for whatever they needed to recapture those old colors and turn them into absolute color coordinates. I wonder if it's even possible today, because what it boils down to is re-manufacturing the old pigments. Not legal for production, but for testing/matching -- sure. In fact, each of you researching colors should derive a Munsell or LAB code, and then weld it on the frame.

Obligatory safety PSA: if you are spraying Imron or any other 2-part primer, paint or epoxy, be sure to take protective gear seriously. Dust masks are right out, even Home Depot's top drawer respirator with the cartridges is limited protection.

The biggest hazard is in the resin, atomized into the air in very large quantity. Lungs are extremely vulnerable, which means you can make yourself sick on a single round of spraying the stuff without proper gear.

Otherwise, exposure is cumulative. Even slow exposure can escalate into a series of worse and worse symptoms, which vary depending on genetic luck and health of your immune system... if you're lucky you'll first become allergic to the paint, and with slow exposure that will stop you from being exposed any more. Most of us are weekend warriors and have a career to fall back on that doesn't involve isocyanates. But career painters use top-drawer PPE complete with moon suits and SCBA gear or a supply air hose, because if they develop an allergy, they are done.

Although honestly, the way so many Americans run around with their bodies in a state of inflammation all the time, covering it with Tylenol or NSAIs, I wonder if a person would even feel the first signs of allergy.

By the way, these toxins are fully consumed by the curing process (assuming the paint was mixed correctly). They are the "grabbers" which link the short polymer chains into exceptionally long polymer chains, which is what makes this paint so tough.

Lets define what we mean by "codes". I assume the term means the catalog or stock number, not the actual mixing formula. The formula is indeed worthless, because the standard mixing bases have changed.

When Mr. Rust was still around, and you made an inquiry about Duco 254-34460, which happened to be the body color the Soo Line specified on their diesel locomotives in 1948, he would pull the original drift card and then tell you, "We haven't made this in a while, we'll have to match it." No problem about different pigments and the like, because they had preserved a specimen of the actual paint, stored under ideal conditions. Yes, they would have to reproduce it using the current pigments, and yes, it might be a less than perfect "industrial" match, but it traced back directly to a sample of the original color.

At one time, back in the eighties, Mr. Rust sent me partial drift cards, with the comments that these were only half size because they were running low on them.

When I contacted Dupont six or seven years ago with additional Dulux codes for the maroon the road used on it's passenger equipment, with the purpose to see how much it might have differed from the locomotive color, and in what way, is when I was told the drift cards did not exist. I donno, maybe they do, but without a sale of mega gallons of paint in the offing, I didn't have much horse power to push the issue, so didn't. That was when the nice helpful lady offered the codes (but no samples) of the modern formulations, but could offer no insight a to what they had been matched to. I would have thought that if they had been matched to an older version of a color in their line, that it would have been noted, so I assume they were matched to a customer supplied sample.

In a way, I don't blame them. Modern computer matching takes a lot of the drudgery out of color matching, and if no one has ordered a color in forty years, there is not much need to provide a perfect match.

The problem is, while drift cards are the only surviving word on the subject, drift cards drift.

Which is exactly why the Munsell system and its derivatives are preferred by scientists, since Munsell is not only based on absolutes but it's also calibrated to human visual perception -- which is what's really important when we're talking about color. (For what it's worth, I was first introduced to Munsell color charts in a plant biology context, where it's been used for the last 90 years or so as an easy, non-instrumental but nonetheless precise method of quantifying plant pigmentation like on flowers, leaves, and fruit, and Munsell is also the standard used by the USDA for field characterization of soil color, believe it or not.)

-Philip Marshall

One reason why even years ago the drift cards were kept in dark sleeves, inside of dark cabinets, except when they were needed.