Hello,
Does anyone know what the correct interior color would be for a CNR Steam engine? There appears to be at least 2 possibly three differet colors of green paint inside our cab. The oldest paint may be much darker than the paint that is currently on the interior walls. I want to make sure that when we repaint the inside that it is to the correct shade of green s per CNR at the time that 6069 was in service.

Have you asked the CN Lines Special Interest Group? They are a wealth of knowledge.

http://cnlines.ca/

Steve Black
Rogers, AR

Get over to the museum in Ottawa and check out their locomotive collection.

Thanks Richard but it is a bit far for me to go. I am lead to believe that at some point, she has has one possibly 2 coats of lighter green painted inside. A piece of wood from the front of the cab shows that the first coat of green was a darker green than what she has on her today.

There are common ways of sampling existing paint to determine and document the various layers and colors of each. These are used by preservation architects (and other preservationist) At their simplest it is scraping through the layers with modelers knife, sanding out the cut to expose the layers, then documenting what you found.

It is good museum or preservation practice to do some sort of historic study on an artifact before doing anything to it... In a sense it sounds like you have started, noting the multiple layers, some darker. This suggests the color has changed over time (not uncommon) and requires you to make a decision as to what year you want the loco painted to. This would require having a basic history of the loco so you can identify other changes that took place over time.

It may be that your locomotive was rebuilt late in life, and received new appliances or a new tender, which would suggest using the interior paint that matches those appliances... alternately the locomotive may have been repainted just prior to going on display with paint colors it never carried in service, arguing for a lower paint layer match...

In any case it is likely that the most accurate history of the paint on your locomotive is found on your locomotive... not on a spec sheet or on a locomotive preserved elsewhere...

Randy,
Thanks for the information and comments. Upon cleaning and inspection of the Pyle electrical fittings that we removed, there was one in particular that had the lighter green paint splashed over the fitting. When I carefully scraped away the layers, the original paint on these fittings is black not green.

Speaking of paint layers, I would hate to guess how many layers are on the exterior. From what I have been told, the colors on the exterior are close to the original spec except there is some doubt over the gold stripe paintwork on the Locomotive.

Not to muddy the waters too much, but keep in mind that a new part from Pyle National was usually painted black when received by the builder.

I came across some new old stock P-N conduit parts that were black out of the box. During the 30's-40's electrical conduit and boxes were usually black from the factory whether used for industrial or residential installations. Most likely when the cab was painted green, these items were painted over and became green as well. On our Lima-Hamilton diesels, these type of items were shown in various photos as being the same color as the cab interior, even though the first layer of paint you could find on the actual item when sanding it down was black.

David Farlow
Whitewater Valley Railroad

May I suggest you start a log, documenting each spot you have found paint... Generally the notation looks like; (from first to last layer)

Substraight (metal or wood)

Primer (not allways found, frequently identifiable under a mignifing glass by the courser pigments, sometimes with flecs of other colors in them)

A paint color (there are lots of ways to describe paint, either with modern chips, PMS (a printers color system) Munsel, or match cards... The choice of the system is could be subject to a long discussion... there are lots of points of view, but by simply chosing one and using it you are better off than not)

A varnish layer (common on passenger cars and older locomotives, not allways found)

A paint color

A paint color

Varnish again?

A dirt layer

A paint color

and so on...

If you are lucky and do your research you may be able to date a specific layer, possibly by lettering found on it, possibly because of a known change in color... from those date points you then can make some educated assumptions about how the locomotive looked in a specific year.

Additionally... keep notes (not just about paint)... note assumptions, the next guy will thank you.

Randy

While one can never match paint to a photo, these cab interior shots of CN 4-6-0 #1112 at SFRMEO might be useful in deciding which shade of green on your engine is correct. We went through the exercise of scraping/ sanding through layers, removing appliances to check locations where repainting would be awkward :

http://public.fotki.com/elliottd/sfrmeo ... g1134.html
http://public.fotki.com/elliottd/sfrmeo ... g1131.html

Steve Hunter
SFRMEO

http://www.sfrmeo.ca/
http://public.fotki.com/elliottd/sfrmeo/