I have a friend who will NOT BELIEVE that I started a paint thread but here we go. I am looking at the Baldwin Specification for Engines, Class10 38 E, Nos. 1317 to 1334 for the New Mexico Railway & Coal Co. dated 4/12,1904 Drawing No. 48. In the paint section it says Engine Olive Green, No Stripping. Is there a representative idea of what this color was? I know there is not a paint chip left that I have seen but I am curious if anyone else has done research on it. I would be interested to know more about this. Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,
Robby Peartree

Believe it or not, there is a locomotive being restored, in what is likely a very accurate rendition of Baldwin olive green paint:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32229

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33511

Below is another site with paint information for locomotives built in that era at Balwin. Hope this helps out:

http://loggingmallets.railfan.net/

http://loggingmallets.railfan.net/sub/p ... finish.htm

Out of curiosity, what is this paint information to be used for? What were---or is a surviving example--of New Mexico Railway & Coal Nos. 1317-1334?

Dear J3a-614

Thank you for the response and it helped a lot. The two cards I have copies of are for locomotives that became the SP C-18 and C-19 class of locomotives after the lease of the El Paso & Southwestern. The specific card I referred to was the C-19 card which SP 3420 was apart of the order. The C-19 were lettered for the El Paso & Northeastern and numbered 161 to 178. I believe the numbers 1317 to 1334 are an internal number for Baldwin’s purposes. The use of the New Mexico Ry. and Coal Company was probably a funding move by the Eddie brother interest. They seem to get their major funding from people living in the Scranton Pennsylvania area. A draft of the history of SP 3420 is here http://trainweb.org/ep-sw/flyer.april.2011.pdf. Since this date we have new material so things will be added but it gives you an idea of the locomotives history.

Sincerely
Robby Peartree

There is the Baldwin paint book at Stanford... It has the matrix explaining the striping, as well as samples of colors...

This was the book(s) used by the Baldwin painters to stripe engines... It has paint splatter... It is as close to the holly grail as it gets...

I will be spending quality time with the book(s) in the next month... I can do research... I and a friend recently found the Rosetta stone... a single page with Wine, Lake and Baldwin Green (and black)...

I take requests...

Randy

Hi Randy - just thinking about future use here - does the book have or still fall under any copyright? Getting to the point - I'm wondering if it would it be possible to see if Stanford could have it scanned into something like the Google Library project - which whom Stanford appears to be a partner.
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html

http://lib.stanford.edu/google-books/stanfords-role-google-books

Just a thought.
Regards,
Sully

Bring a Munsell Book of Color, and see if you can get the Munsell codes for all those colors.

It's not quite perfect, as there'll have been drift in the Baldwin colors, but an easy way to capture and fix the color that is there.

Also, beware artificial light. Color comparison is best done in natural light. Artificial light can be very "notchy" and fail to emit light in certain parts of the color spectrum, e.g. the way RGB monitors emit only red, green and blue. Artificial light might emit, say, no orange light at all, meaning you do not see an orange pigment that is essential.

The scan doesn't really help you as you can't count on color fidelity through a scan. (I use scans only for relative comparison; when I am able to scan the actual chip next to the Munsell sheet on the same scan, but even that is catch-as-catch-can, you sitll have to compare sheet to sheet in samples.)

Forgive me... he did say SAMPLES - I was thinking it might have base or pigment combinations or codes with the colors listed that might enable others to reproduce. (too much assumpution)
That is also good advice about the reference and lighting - good luck Randy.

Regards,
Sully

I had no idea that Baldwin kept Olive green as their standard locomotive color so late. It makes sense that most roads would specify Black to keep their roster's uniform appearance, but that smaller lines might not bother.

Tangentially, the Pacific Locomotive Association at Niles Canyon, CA just had their first test run for Clover Valley Lumber Company 2-6-6-2t #4. The Logging Mallets website above inspired me to do this:I do not pretend these color are accurate; my photoshop skills have their limits. Took me a while to figure out that the odd dark zones on the saddle tank were the reflections of cranes over the engine.

I hope Stanford could be persuaded to make their book more widely available, but unfortunately, most archives see their holdings as a source of revenue, and expect high fees for reproduction and publication even when copyright has long lapsed.

More on the return of CVLCo 4 to service here: http://plasteam.ncry.org/CVL4/

On my last visit to Stanford and the book, Jim Wilke brought the Nevada State Railroad Museum's Munsel chips... We found that they didn't cover the very deep colors we found. I made a series of notes, comparing them to 19th century paint samples I have, and will be making a series of match cards, then comparing the match cards to the book.

Stanford will allow supervised photography, but charges $3.00 per photo. Eventually I plan to copy the entire book. There have been informal discussions about making photos available, but don't hold your breath.

You might want to look at the Pacificng web page on paint... http://www.pacificng.com/template.php?p ... /index.php

Randy

If I may be so bold as to suggest bringing a commercial color chart from Home Depot with you to compare........there may be something out there that any of us could pick up at the store that would be a decently close match. Even latex house paint chips can be color matched in Delstar. Once you develop real matched chips, ARM / TRAIN conventions would be the logical place to share them.

dave

"I had no idea that Baldwin kept Olive green as their standard locomotive color so late."--Randolph R. Ruiz

"Oh no, don't you dare say that, Randy, don't you even think it. We just finished painting No. 4, we're not going to paint it green now. . ."--Other members of the Pacific Locomotive Association who have just read this thread. :-D

A thought occurred to me--just how many engines were delivered in this olive green, typically with aluminum striping and lettering? I keep thinking of the little 4-6-0s on the ET&WNC, and perhaps even of East Broad Top power. It's fairly well documented that the D&RGW had green boiler jackets on a number of engines, many of which were repaints. I would bet the narrow=gauge power at Walt Disney World would have been green when new.

Finally, how much of this influence in green paint may have come from a major customer--the Pennsylvania, which for so long specified engines painted in Dark Green Locomotive Enamel, which we know as Brunswick Green?

Randy,

I would be interested in know what, from a BLW Specification Card, would the actual painting be for:

"Painting: Engine Style 291 Olive Green and Aluminum
Tender Style 291 " " " "

Style 291 is the question. I suspect it refers to the pin-striping but I'm not certain. I believe this may be part of the matrix you refer to. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

The October 1925 specification for Sumter & Choctaw (Allison Lumber Co.) 103 calls for "Painting Style-Olive Green and Gold". No mention of striping style.

In this builder's photo, the light-colored running gear is obviously just for the picture; helps the shadow detail be more visible. I suspect the darker parts of the locomotive were in the typical flat gray water-based paint to aid the photographer. BLW, Alco and Lima all did that for the "formal" builder's photos.

I would like to see a good match of Baldwin Olive Green to current paints. Awaiting your findings and research!

Howard P.

I seem to remember CSRM spending money for a professional photographer to document the Color Book back in Walt Gray's directorship.

That is difficult to imagine. The Munsell notation can describe any color, but the chips in the Munsell books only start at 2.5/ which is very dark, to the point where very little chroma saturation is possible. So they don't bother with 2/ and 1/, to get those you would have to interpolate.

Beware, there's also a Munsell book called "Nearly Neutrals Edition" which focuses very intensely on pastels.
Here is a standard sheet for 5B hue http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Bzloo47onOc/S ... G_0504.JPG
Here is a Nearly Neutral http://www.unitycolor.com/images/produc ... /163_6.jpg
There is a huge bias in the paint-selection industry toward pastels -- because most chosen paint colors are for building exteriors or interiors, that's where the money is. People paint houses "eggshell" or "Sahara tan" but never "Traction orange".


Hmm, having tried that on more than one occasion, I have not had much luck. Those are generally made to help you choose colors, not match them. (Same is true of Pantone.) For matching, they have those little scanners. But IME, many railroad colors are out of gamut for their machine (read: requires so much pigment it would overflow the can.) See above: "bias toward pastels".


But you realize that sort of data has a short shelf life, because pigments go obsolete at an astonishing rate. You're lucky if a paint formula is good 10 years later. This is why "Get the 50 year old pigment formula, run to the paint store" is not going to work.

Automotive paints move even faster IME.

Paint companies are not in the business of holding colors constant across decades. It's too much work and other people do it better (Pantone and especially Munsell), and their customers who care about that sort of thing are already using those systems (or ought to). They're not interested in matching old formulas because they don't want customers complaining that it doesn't match the old weathered paint. Paint companies hate mis-mixes, and they've nearly eliminated them with the color scanners and computer controlled paint mixers.

Pantone is about style; and assuring you get consistent results from your printers. They don't care if Coca-Cola Red drifts a little over 20 years, they care if it's the same from Argentina to China.

Munsell is a notation for describing any color. See also CIE. Given any color you can resolve its notation, and then, you can weld it on the car :) and your great grandchild can read it off and tell the paint company to match it.