From what I understand, while early patents for spray painting are evident as early as the 1890's, spray painting in industrial applications really didn't catch on until the automotive industry picked it up in the 1920's-1930s. As it applies to railroads, do we have any idea when specific railroads or builders picked up this method of painting at a considerable scale?

These days in the preservation world it seems as though everything is finished in a gloss coat of paint which is sprayed on. And this is for good reason- a single person with a spray gun can get a lot more coverage a lot more quickly with much more aesthetically pleasing results than a group of many armed with brushes. But historically speaking, my inclination is that just about everything before the 1930's or 40's would have been brushed.

Not that this intricate of a detail on a decent paint job would be noticed by anyone unless they got up close and deliberately looked for the minute brush strokes, but if one wanted to be that faithful to the "original look" or the way it was done, this might be an important detail in their exacting restoration.

So I assume most of the engines that survive today were probably brush painted by the perspective railroad, but I wonder if it was the same at the factory, with so many engines to paint on such a large scale. It seems like spraying would have been a practical thing to adopt once the extra material costs of spray (extra thinners, cleaning agents, ect) balanced out with labor rates as wages climbed- but I have no evidence that any steam era builders adopted spraying paint at all, or if they did when they did it.

I know this is an incredibly niche detail to split hairs on, but I am intrigued if there are any accounts around of what went on in the paint shops of various railroads and manufacturers.

p.s.- Has anyone had an up-close look at Baldwin #60000 lately to check for brush strokes?

-Sam

Good painters, using good paint, don't leave brush marks. More later.

Yes, but generally speaking the two methods of painting, when applied by the "average" volunteer, have discernable results when viewed extremely close up (read inches to nose-length away). Any more than a view feet away and you won't tell much of a difference, especially if the job's done by a good painter as you mentioned.

Sort of like using red vs white oak, most won't be able to tell the difference if one is used over the other, and both work just fine, but if the original piece was made with white oak- that would be the true to history material to use. We could extrapolate this further to using machine tools vs hand tools when recreating a piece. The result of the exactly replicated part is pretty much the same, and nobody would ever know one was used over the other. And at the end of the day does it really matter?

I just ask and ponder that perhaps the more true-to-history method of painting should be brushing more often (Athough I'm not advocating that this is in any way the more practical approach to take- I'd probably stil spray a carside if it was the better option, even if it was brushed 100 years ago)

Some random thoughts from this occasional painter of railway equipment:

I have (somewhere) an ALCO builder's image of the cab and tender shop at Schenectady, showing gloss black being sprayed on D&H Challengers in 1940.

During a 1927 rebuild program for wood-sided boxcars, the NYNH&H carshop crews passed each piece of siding lumber through a spray painting rig that automatically applied a coat of paint to each side of the board, and the finished car received a final coat of paint (not specified if brush or spray).

Strasburg indicated during a 1988-90 (I forget the exact date) shop tour, that spray painting of locomotives and cars had been discontinued in favor of brush painting.

Most of the heritage railways in the UK brush paint their locomotives and coach stock, with spectacular results.

Long Island Rail Road painted passenger cars and diesel locomotives using DuPont Imron, applied by roller and brush, in the 1980s.

From what I recall seeing in railway trade publications and company photos, spray application of coatings on North American railway equipment was quite prevalent by the mid-1930s.

Howard P.

Some years ago, at the Nevada Historical Society I reviewed an accounting record book from the Nevada Central RR containing pasted in copies of paid invoices. This book covered a period of time in the late 1890s. I recall that there was one from the Southern Pacific for a spray paint rig. This being about 1898.

The Pacific Electric an interurban in the greater Los Angeles area was spray painting its equipment using an automotive grade of paint in the mid-late 1920s.

If we are to truly and accurately do it the "right" way we must look at none other than the Standard Railroad of the World! And what does the mighty Pennsy say?


Locomotive shop prefers brushes


Car department prefers crude spray rigs mounted on push carts.

I remember a reminiscence in Trains Magazine from, I think, a Milwaukee Road carman who recalled spraying freight cars in the 1930s using a flattened pipe nozzle instead of an aerosol spray gun. The Pennsy car photo may show the same sort of hose job.

On my first trip to England in 1982 I noticed the High Speed Train sets were conspicuously brush-painted. This struck me as a make-work deal.

Aarne Frobom
Duco City, Michigan

Fascinating details and information. Thanks for the replies. It seems like spraying caught on earlier than I had thought, although its use was hit or miss depending on which company it was, or even where in the company.

Spraying would have caught on with the advent of portable power sources to power them. And the 'infrastructure' to power them -- whether small electric motors, gasoline, or clean, dry air. What is on those 'carts' may be of more than academic interest...

My guess is that some of the 'crude' car painting was done with yard air, but I don't have even secondhand knowledge of the details.

The other thing might be the advent of different 'sprayable' paint with the required durability. Automobile paint was improved in several leaps during the 1920s.

There is a NYC RR movie showing the first Hudson #5200 being spray painted at ALCO Schenectady. It was more of a pipe sprayer than the current can style.

Kevin Kohls

I was a house painter on my uncle's crew in my youth. We did high-end properties and always used brushes and rollers. 20 years ago, at the East Troy RR Museum, I took that experience to lead the painting of a 1927 electric trolley car. Former Philadelphia Suburban Transportation 164 was painted using an oil based primer after all the body repair and surface sanding was done. The primer was wet sanded after drying with fine grit paper and a second coat applied. The finish paint chosen was an oil-based tractor enamel from the farm implement store. Because tractors sit outside most of the time their paint needs to be durable and resistant to fading.

Application was made with fine nap rollers and and good quality paint brushes. After the first coat set up, a second one was applied. Big advantage over spraying is no masking or respirators or spray booths are necessary.

The car still looks good today as seen in this recent picture.

I think your time estimate is a bit off. Spray painting using steam or compressed air was actually very common by the 1890s, while the technology was being experimented with in the late 1880s. The railroad press, especially those with monthly columns dedicated to paint shops, were very interested in spray painting in the early 1890s and most issues had some new experiment from railroads showing off just how effective and cost effective steam painting was.

Attached is an image printed in the August 1898 issue of Railroad Car Journal depicting the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie steam paint setup. The article described an experiment to determine the maximum effective altitude above the ground that steam lines could atomize paint. It also indicated that the photograph was taken several years before printing.

With the advent of enamels and lacquers in the '20s, I would imagine that spray application on steel cars got to pretty widespread short after. I can still see advantages to painting wood cars by brush, though.

Pounce patterns and hand painting hung on for a long time in some places for lettering though stencils for spraying were also used early on. Those with large fleets to maintain most likely went to stencils quickly and hand painted out the bridge marks on the reporting marks, car numbers and monograms. Look at the car data - if the lettering has bridges, they used stencils. It was rare to paint those out except for builder's photos. If you're looking at a repaint and the data has no bridges, it was likely done with a pounce pattern and hand painted.

OK, more time today.

While railroads were experimenting with spray painting in the late nineteenth century, there were discussions in the trade press well into the thirties arguing that brushing was better, at least for the primer coat, because it was felt that brushing "worked" the paint into the surface better.

The early spray equipment appears to have been some variation of the 'blow pipe', where the venturi effect drew paint up a siphon tube and spat it out a crude nozzle, often a flattened pipe. This system was mainly used to quickly apply paint to the surface, to be finished by brushing. Admittedly, a lot of photos show freight cars being painted with long pipes to reach upper surfaces, but that's freight cars. There was no requirement for, or expectation of, a smooth, run free surface. I recall reading an article in old trade press concerning the United Fruit Co. painting practices in their shop in Cuba about 1910, in which the author makes the statement that the spray equipment "needed to be foolproof, because if it stopped working, the painters would just put it aside and continue on with their brushes." The fact that they even had brushes seems to indicate they were using them right along to work out runs and sags.

Back in the early seventies when I was working on a North Shore interurban at IRM, I made the comment, "Too bad we can't spray paint it like Highwood did." Howard Odinius, museum founder and long time North Shore motorman was standing nearby and commented that Highwood did very little spray painting. To prove it he walked up to the car, rubbed the oxidized paint with his fingers, and faint brush marks appeared. We walked over to another car and had the same results.

In that era there were a lot of decent brushable enamels. The problem was lack of proper colors. DuPont DULUX, long a staple of railroad painting was still available, but not in the brushable base that DuPont used to offer. So, we started spray painting automotive enamel out of necessity. A side benefit is that the automotive finishes typically hold their gloss for much longer.

However, there was still a need for paint suitable for brush application for ongoing restoration projects, where it is desirable to paint portions as they are completed. We found a definite need for Pullman green, Which we were using a Ditzler automotive enamel for. As luck would have it, Rustoleum Corp. contacted us to explore the possibility of filming one or more TV commercials, for which they would donate several hundred gallons of paint. The commercials were never made, but the donation was, and they custom mixed thirty or forty gallons of paint to match the Ditzler Pullman color.

My active involvement came to an end about the time that Dulux was discontinued so I have no experience with the modern replacements. However, from my experiences as a homeowner, modern consumer grade paints are garbage. The low VOC formulas just won't brush out properly, everything looks like it was painted with a rake. Which is a shame because now it's easy to get a custom match to a sample. I understand that there are still workable alternatives made for other fields, I've heard good things about Awl Grip marine epoxy, but I've never worked with it, so will let others comment.