In early 2015, as reported on RYPN the ex Missouri Pacific caboose 1243, a 1951 Sedalia built Magor Copy caboose that resides at the Railroad and Heritage Museum in Temple, TX was burned by some juvenile arsonists.

I've been working with the museum trying to help line up some prototype info as well as help them nail down the proper color, and they are finally ready to pursue an exterior restoration (the inside to become a party room)back into MP colors. I've seen exactly one color photograph of the 1243, from the 70's and it's in boxcar red as seen here. http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/ ... _behni.jpg

I've done some research and haven't really found a good color match. So, I come asking for some help - would anyone who has restored any equipment in "Boxcar Red" (and I realize that there are infinite shades of "Boxcar Red") mind sending me the paint codes you used, and perhaps a photo of your project. I'll send that along to the Museum with full credit of where it came from.

Here is a photo of the car in question. It was painted years ago with red house paint which has faded to the shade you see here. Fire burned some of it off. The other side has a lot of rot along the bottom sill along the length of the car. It was scheduled for repairs today. Last I heard, plan was to sandblast the car. I'd try to get a flake of the original color to match to, but the fire burned off most of the paint, even under the roof overhangs.


I appreciate any help you can give, as the Museum staff want to see the car painted back into a historically accurate prototype scheme.

Thanks in advance,
Bradley Linda
Waco, Texas

In general, the artifact is the best source of color information. Find a place away from heat damage, preferably protected like under the roof/end overhang, sand through all layers of paint, then polish the exposed bulls eye, look at the colors found under magnification, Identify the paint used at the time of the restoration target date, then find a match in the paint of your choice. I don't trust electronic matching systems...

The layers are in themselves a history of the paint applied to the car... and therefor a history of the car's maintenance...

Correlate what you find on the body to historic information... Railroad color records, photos of this and similar cars...

Randy

Try the Missouri Pacific Historical Society. Sometimes you get lucky and the HS's have the pigment manufacturer info. Don't obsess on an exact match. If you do find original paint on the car, a close-enough match is OK. A lot of shops mixed what they needed so there could be some color variation from batch to batch. And, red colors weathered more quickly.

From Eric...



I would agree with looking to the railroad's historical society for informantion on pigments and drift cards... but do look to as exact a match as possible. It is easy to use close enough to hid sloppy research...

Railroads had common standards and drift cards to hold to specific colors. Railroad painters were professionals and minimized color variation. Too often we hear stories about railroads going down to the local hardware store and buying the cheapest barn red and using that... These are just stories... railroads had standards which were followed.

Weathering is an issue with all paint, but is hard to represent on a museum object using museum restoration guide lines and ethics... we just don't have a way to say this is paint that represents old paint that is 1 year or 2 years old... and defend that statement... and is an issue with modern vs historic paint particularly. Many historic pigments were based on lead or other heavy metals, and those pigments have very specific color attributes, which are difficult or impossible to be reproduced with modern "safe" pigments.

A good example is UP Armor Yellow, which was to a great extent Chrome Yellow (lead yellow) a pigment which was very deep yellow with high opacity... the replacement pigments are translucent and don't represent the historic appearance well and so are hard to match to original color.

Randy

Randy - thanks for posting additional detail. I probably shouldn't have been so general. I've gotten bogged down in historic color research more times than I care to admit so I kinda short-cutted my response.

My point being (and strictly my opinion), with all the variables from the original mix and application to current formulations, pigments & sheen, if it looks like a match to your sample at 10' away you've done a pretty good job. Having a drift card or a sample prepared from one to compare with would be ideal but those are hard to come by.

I'd suggest finding a local paint/coatings supplier willing to work with you to get the best match possible. Sometimes you can work with the coatings manufacturer if they still have the records (and if you know who they were). PPG (Ditzler) may have some records if they were a supplier and they have been nice to work with. Their lab has done good work on some of the NS Heritage units. DuPont industrial coatings was sold to Axalta so that may be a tougher nut to crack. Sherwin-Williams was also supplier to the railroads.

It certainly would be nice to have an online database for historic railroad colors like they do for cars and trucks. I can only dream....

If you do use Axalta you will find that they are a tough nut to crack. However they do have a place you can get Imron matched to Axalta and they do a pretty good job of it.

PM me if you need help getting thru that layer. My local store couldn't do it, but another manager in their chain succeeded and I am happy with the result.

What I don't understand is why would you immediately take something over and then rearrange all of the fleet colors and not give your distributors a cross reference? Any way they did....

Bradley,

Gosh, 17 or 18 years ago there was a Mop caboose in Palestine behind the TSRR engine house, it was in the original paint. You might get a chip from that one, maybe.

Best of Luck & WORK SAFE,
Sammy

Thanks for the tips. I have an email in to MPHS. It will probably be this weekend before I can go examine the car for old paint. Hoped to do that last weekend but some family medical issues prevented that.


Bradley Linda
Waco