The REA car at Altoona looks a lot better than ours (currently unrestored) and I have tried to stay at arms length when it comes to sniping. Everyone has different abilities and sets different standards for what they can do, physically and financially.

But does it cost any more, or less, to do something accurately? In my case we set what must be very high standards and admittedly sometimes miss the mark. But not due to lack of effort.

So, I will celebrate the good looking REA car, at the same time encouraging anyone to take the time and effort to preserve the appearance and in many cases, the methods used. Most of the time, that means painted lettering, not vinyl.

Fleets were done with paint using masks and stencils and with care that can be done by hand without the cost of trying to spray the job. And positive masks using vinyl come very close to the way many cars were decorated.

Congrats on the Altoona/NRHS REA car.

Bob Kutella

Absolutely. Perhaps not in drops of paint, but in research time and effort. And time is money.

Backdating CNR 89 would have been much more expensive if the folks in Strasburg had done the leg work I did to track down the original CNR specifications / drawings.

If Kelly or Rick had made the stencils for N&W 475 or GWR 90, photo specials would have been pricier, or cancelled.

In the case of the REA car, it sounds like the operative phrase is "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Someone was offering to give them a "99% right" restoration job, free. The smart move is to say "Thanks!" with a big ol' smile on your face, and do the other 1% as resources permit, especially when the 1% is as easily modified as this. (If the 1% had involved structural integrity, my answer might be different.)

JAC

I think the word you are looking for John is "reversable" or "irreversable".

Paint is not only reversable, it is relatively inexpensive and has a limited duration when stored outdoors. That limitation assures there will be ample opportunity to make adjustments in the future.

Altering the actual structural fabric is another thing entirely. Once gone it is gone, and it can't be put back identically to its original condition. This makes repair / restoration a dicey business for the strictest interpretation of "preservation". I kind of like to see things which have been conserved rather than restored, and show all the wear and damage incurred in revenue service. You can learn a lot by interpreting that pattern of patina.

Even in making repairs to keep things in service, I like to see it done making minimal changes which lead to loss of this historic patina. A locomotive or car which has put in 80 years of hard service shouldn't look like it was delivered from the works yesterday. Dents in jackets, kinks in frames, chips gone from cooling fins on the air pump, burned patches in a wooden deck, all say something about something that happened to that locomotive (for example) in the past which makes it not another similar locomotive, but just itself.

If replacement of parts is necessary, it is good to try to replicate whatever standards, materials, and practices were used on it in service. If it ran on a marginal industrial line with a lot of bailing wire, use new bailing wire to replace old. Of course, if compromises must be made for the sake of safety, so be it - but there should be a considered plan for it.

Going beyond this point takes the situation out of preservation and into entertainment for me - I am comfortable drawing the line about here. Nothing wrong with being a good tourist railroad, provided you don't call yourself a museum, and misrepresent yourself in the process. I like tourist railroads that do a good job of entertaining. I like museums that do a good job of interpreting history. Integrity of purpose, intent, and practice can allow for them not to be mutually exclusive, but it is a fine line to walk. This challenge of philosophy and reality is one of the most interesting facets of our business.

dave

This thread brings up the "challenges" of working in a rail museum with a mostly volunteer work force. Even when it comes to paint there are situations that arise frequently which those who actually do research run into. Just two examples are that there are those who are convinced that all steam locomotives had silver cylinder head covers, a red cab roof, and white tires on the drivers. I've had the duty to ask the guys to correct this when they were repainting a Russian decapod, although the cab roof was ok. It took a handful of in-service photos to get it across that this loco was just black with no silver cylinder head covers or white tires. In another case we have an 0-8-0 which was donated in 1948. When it was repainted some time later someone decided that all steam locos had their numbers painted on the sandbox, even though the words all and always of course never apply. This is complicated by the changes that the railroads themselves made over time as standards changed. There are photos of this loco as it was on arrival and many of it and others in use, none of which had such numbers, which were later painted over. Recently when work to repaint this loco started these old numbers were found and were seen as proof that the railroad had used such markings. Again a handful of photos was brought out to convince folks that this was something that happened at the museum, not on the railroad. The temptation to overdress locomotives is nothing new and constant vigilance is needed to keep things reasonably accurate. Recent postings of locos with the wrong lettering font or white counterweights just show how far this can go. And other folks have the same situation, as overdressed traction engines and airplanes that look like they were just built and never flown are seen at other museums.

That is certainly true, and gets to be even more of an issue at times when confronted with a piece of equipment having worn multiple color and/or lettering schemes in its lifetime.

Where is the proper point in time for a restoration? That is an all but unanswerable question, except in a few cases. Many times it is a matter of taste, depending upon the theme of the restoration and/or the mission of the museum. Most times it is a matter of the most "famous" iteration of the particular piece of equipment involved. Other times it is not so clear.

For example, we have a troop train kitchen car built in 1942 we are repainting. The best history (in my opinion) for it would be to show it in its original colors (Pullman green) and lettering (USOX in yellow-gold) with no herald as built and as it served its original purpose. However, the car was later converted to another purpose as a tool car, and repainted (olive drab) and lettered (USAX white) with the herald of the Transportation Corps applied, and some feel that scheme would be more understandable to visitors and look better.

There is a proposal to paint and letter one side and one end as built in 1942, and do the opposite side and end as relettered later. Then we do interpretive signage to explain each scheme.

Just out of curiosity, how do YOU ALL feel about this? We are (almost) all in the business of operating museums and preserving artifacts. What would you do?

When I was getting the PRR N5c ready to paint, there was much discussion over what color to paint it. The discussion was narrowed a bit when it was decided to put the car back as close as possible to what it looked like when it was originally built. Investigation found that it was some sort of red but not box car red nor was it tuscan red in 1942. We settled on caboose red and it looks great! This spring we will rough up the first coat and give it a second coat which we hope will last for a few years.

We have one older gentleman who is very knowledgeable about the local railroad systems that comes by regularly and grumbles that it should be tuscan red. He just cannot grasp the concept that we did not want to paint it in what probably was the most recognizable paint scheme, but rather the original color. We will not have this problem when we do the Tidewater tank car this year. As the song goes, black is black.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Nah. We used to annoy our colleague in the car shop by complaining he had the worng shade of black paint. Thank goodness he had a sense of humor.

Al Savage, former VP of maintenance of DC Transit, Museum VP, and now deceased, admitted that there was no exact shade of "electric blue", gray and cream colors used on the Capital Transit PCCs, 1000s and one-man standard cars. According to Al over the years the blue became greener and the cream less yellow and the gray lighter as the company changed paint vendors and tints over the years. We finally settled on Norway green as the standard green, and tuxedo cream for the cream. The "correct" color of the brown (or is it burgundy?) striping is still a matter of serious debate.

Then there was Al's story about the color of paint on the PCC trucks in Washington. After years of trying to keep the dark (brunswick?) green paint clean, he went to the paint shop and mixed up a color he called "dirt" that best matched the color of the trucks after they'd been out on the line for a while.

Wesley

Treating opposite sides of a car or loco differently is an entirely valid approach when it can be used. If the item is essentially unchanged the use of different lettering works. It can also work for locomitives when the same number is used by different owners. Russian decapods from the Frisco were sold to Eagle Picher for use at their mines and wore the same number at both places, so wearing these two schemes works well and represents two eras in the history of the locos, several of which were preserved.

Reds are tough. I have had a color photo and a model car shot and matched, and come up with orange both times. And they matched! Go figure......

Bob, it really doesn't matter - if you end up with something you don't like, it will need repainting in a few years anyhow. I'd be more concerned with long term planning for quality of coat and adhesion for future repainting prep than anything else at this point, in your shoes.

dave

A consistent mechanical state is important (maybe only to me) before deciding the ballots on paint scheme. From a romantic sense many museum people like to see it as built so we can justify (perhaps) a spotless paint job. I have done many cars 10 years, 20 years or even 45 years into their life, not only to portray something at some point in its service life; but also not to have to undo changes made over that previous period. Changes in windows, wiring, hardware mounting, upholstery, even repairs of wreck damage. We have a replacement brakewheel that came on one caboose that has a casting date of 1954, so that is the earliest paint job we decided to put on that car.

You need a good car history, photos, and records to get down to this level of nitpicking. And as mentioned previously, some key info only rises after a restoration has been completed!

Many modelers have done different paint jobs on different sides, even different numbers. That becomes a little more problematic to me, record keeping etc. Which number is it? "Would the real 1277 step forward?"

Bob Kutella

Along the lines of info gathering in this thread, we have been searching for years for even a single picture, any angle, of tank cars from Pan Am Southern or predecessor Root Refinery in El Dorado Arkansas. In this case we located mechanical records identifying car number but cannot locate even a single 'typical' paint scheme image for any tank car from those properties - PASX or RUTX reporting marks. We know the decorations on the car currently are not accurate.

Still hoping

Bob Kutella

Ron -

Not (quite) so fast! I understand that Eagle-Picher cut down the tender sides for visibility after they received the 2-10-0's from the Frisco. In fact, IRM did a restoration on the tender of their Russian Decapod to bring it back to its appearance when it was in service on the SLSF. So if you letter one side for EP and the other side for the FRISCO, the tender will give it away. What are the plans for the 2-10-0 at MOT?

Les

I will have to take a good look at the tender when I go to MOT later this week and get back to everyone. I'll check both sides of the tender for current markings too. I'll probably have to look at the usual stack of photos to see it there were any changes, but that's part of the fun as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure what the question about MOT's plans for the loce is asking but static exhibit is what I would expect is all that is intended.

Ron -

I guess I should have been a little more explicit with my question. What I meant was, what are the plans FOR MARKING the Russian Decapod at MOT; EP one side and SLSF the other (as you implied), or strictly EP or FRISCO? I didn't think there were any plans to restore the 2-10-0 to service, although the thought is certainly intriguing!

Les

It had Eagle Picher markings on the fireman's side and Frisco on the engineer's side before this most recent painting. I'll check and see if they left it that way. But right now it has been moved to where only the engineer's side is visible to visitors.