Little Coal Wagons - LCs 2

 DB continues from last time:

After painting the 10 new LCs brown, all manner of weathering was applied with various colours and shades of washes.  The intent being to make the 10 wagons look 'uniform but all different'. Some a little redder, a few a little yellower, a few a little greyer, a few a little blacker and so on. A few patches of fresh repair paint here and there, a few blobs of rust, and so on. Where the effects were a bit strong, I went back and mellowed it a little. I may do more of that, and will dullcote the whole lot to take any remaining sheen off.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday is that these Trackgang LC side and end castings are just superb. Fine, crisp detail without any casting flaws and no noticeable flash. Whoever made these masters deserves some quiet applause. Next time I'll get Russell to assemble them for me  :)

As a finishing touch, black patches for 'Lyttelton Coal Traffic' stencilling were added above the yellow number patches on the new LC wagons, most of my other 'nice' LCs (a few can remain in a general goods train or join the coal train if needed) and all my 'less-nice' old scungy castings. Those ugly old fellas are a bit sub-par, but smuggling a few of them into a long train to make up numbers might not be noticed. And they're a bit of NZ120 history! 

Annoyingly, I went through a few photo books after painting the black squares, and found that those  'Lyttelton Coal Traffic' patches are probably a bit 'late 80s' for my liking, and not all the wagons on the trains had them anyway! D'oh.  So I painted over the patches on two of the new wagons and some of the old ones with body colour brown. 

As I don't have the ability to print white on my Alps printer at the moment, I made up a simple spreadsheet like so and printed it on white decal paper with a laser printer: 

This came out better than expected, and once I had my production line process sorted, it was quite therapeutic to add these decals to about 20 wagons. If there was any white showing at the cut edges of the decals it was touched up with black paint later on.

Then a set of wagon numbers was made up for the new wagons (and a ton of my old wagons) and printed on clear decal sheet. Most of these are actually real TMS numbers, but some were made up - its not as if I can read them unaided anyway!

To clarify, I can read, I just can't see.

And as an aside, here is a comparison of various sample LC models I have, starting with three embarassing survivors of the old bog casting factory from about 1992. For some reason I've hung onto about 15 of these well-travelled models. The masters were made with plastic sides and stripwood for the bodyside ribs, as this was before Plastruct rods were freely available. The four (very subtle, barely visible) 'bumps' on the sides (for internal rope lashing on the prototypes) were blobs of PVA! I made two masters as the first RTV mould broke up after a while, and the second one had integral little rectangular knobs underneath to hold the Peco couplers down. Note the bottom model in the pic is on a stretched 10-foot Peco chassis, the middle one on a Fleishman chassis with unusual metal wheels, and the top one on the usual 15-foot Peco. The Flashfix bondo bog stuff was often hard to get into the nooks and crannies of the rubber moulds and bits have broken off in the subsequent 30 years. Rather than being a 'proper' two piece mould, I remember forcing triangular pieces of rubber down into the top of the poured Flashfix to 'remove' material from inside the walls where I wanted the coal to be. Fortunately, the bog was easy to carve as it went off, so one could further thin the walls and open up that space for the coal. As usual, the two foot rule (perhaps even extended to "nobody should look at these from less than a four foot radius), will be vigorously enforced...

Next up below are two similar but different models, and I'm not sure where they came from. Note that the lower one doesn't have the lashing bumps, and its a very crisp casting. They might have been purchased from Rod Murgatroyd, or Rhys, or was it Cross Creek that made a few tops? The one that I've added a ridgepole to is modelled as an LB, with spoked wheels stolen from a 10-foot Peco chassis. Technically its the only one that can legally have the round Peco axlebox, although some LCs received roller bearings in their later years.  The door detail is nicely done on this, but the oversized lumps on the sides are a bit hard to decal and paint around. Maybe I even made these myself. I must go back through the blog as a memory stirrer.

And then three-foot-six 3D prints, some of the details being more chunky in nature, but being one piece, they certainly go together easily! The top one has a strata line, and the lower one I've (incorrectly!) modified the upper doors. I must check these, but I think I removed some underframe/sill material to have the tops sit lower on the Peco chassis. 

And lastly six of the ten "new" Trackgang bodies on Peco chassis that this series of postings is about. Nice fine crisp detail. 

Next we will give them a shot of Dulcote, add a few little details and, plop some coal in.

DSJ Part 3 and a half. Coupler pondering.

DB Says:

Not much to report other than a few brief visits to the painting chair in recent days.

A structural challenge discovered a few days ago was that the coupler slot in this model is the perfect size for the underslung MicroTrains couplers that I have in the spare parts box, but it is at the wrong height, leaving the coupler face way too high. I have always used the 'MicroTrains standard height', because many of my wagons use their bogies as-is. Even the non-underslung versions won't work in this hole location.

Assuming fixing this was going to make a potentially fatal (to the model, hopefully not the modeller) mess, I pondered a few solutions before trying two tonight.

1. Cut the coupler slot right down to the bottom (including taking out the shunter's step in the centre) by making two cuts with a Dremel disc. I worried this might crack the ends off or break something badly, plus it creates a dusty mess everywhere.
2. Drill a bunch of small holes below the current opening with my Black and Decker drill and use a file or something to square up the enlarged hole. I did this, but didn't have to...
3. ...because I used my tiny jeweller's saw to expand the whole thing downwards about 5mm in an approximately square shape. This was surprisingly easy, really quick, and not wildly messy in terms of dust.

A few pictures as the model stands.... Tamiya Panel Line Accent stuff was used on the end/top grilles at the motor end. There must be some variation in how this model is printed, as the top-port grill was well contained, but the Accent colour seeped out of the top-starboard one. Easily covered with some grey once it had set.

A triangular blob of yellow has been applied at this end, marking where a KiwiRail Fern will split the red and yellow. The DSJs seem to have their grey half at the short hood end, and the red on the motor end on both sides, with a 'reverse Fern' on this port side. 

The copper bogie 'springs' have been capped with a sliver of plastruct rod (about .020x.020 inches size). My big clunky fuel tanks have been removed from the shell. I'll cut them down and mount them on the chassis sides instead.

I've also painted the thick window edge cutouts black to make the cab wall thickness less obvious.

The white below on the end is a reflection! I have been contemplating another coat of the orange, as the grey Tamiya Surface Primer certainly takes some covering. I might try the white version once this grey can runs out.

As you might be able to see in this view, I finally had the yellow cab sides looking OK after four or five coats and touchups, yet the last thick coat obviously wasn't thoroughly dry underneath, and of course I stuck my mitts in it. Gordammit. 

Upcoming items on the agenda include finalising the chassis height inside the shell, adding couplers, and then finishing the shell off with handrails and decals.

DSJ Part 3. Paint.

A thin coat of Tamiya Surface Primer was sprayed onto the DSJ shell from the can (great stuff this) and left to set overnight.

The Tamiya acrylics don't really come in the right colours for us, but they are readily available throughout the country and pretty easy to work with.  So if you want more realistic colours, you have to mix paint shades. I've learnt from experience that doing this on a one-off/day to day basis is a mistake, as your next coat or touchup coat never matches your previous mix.

So I decided to make a whole tin of the right colours once and for all. I went out and bought a fresh (easily mixed, non gunky) X6 Orange, X7 red AND X8 Lemon Yellow.  After giving them a good shake, I tipped maybe 5% or so of the orange into the yellow to 'red' it up slightly (make it slightly less lemony), and did the same of red into the orange (to make the orange less yellowy). It doesn't take a lot to change the colour. I've put a dab on the lids below so you can see the before and after. Shake it all up well.

After two coats the result is seen below. One more coat is needed for the yellow. I'm not sure why I started painting the cab grey, a hangover from the fruit salad days I guess. You can see the DXC behind with its too-red shade on the long hood. I've cursed this since I did it.

I have almost 50 shades of grey, and randomly decided on XF91 for this. Lifecolour UA 722 (a sort of reddy, grungy grey was used on the walkways.

As always with the Tamiyas, a little paint retarder stops everything congealing too quickly and a little thinner may help too. Best to put a few thin coats on rather than one thick blobby one. Unless that is your intention of course, as was mine here on the side sills to fill any remaining gaps!

A few other things I need: Some half-decent brushes - a fiddly fine-pointed one for details, a big flat one for large surfaces like the roof and the sides (to avoid blobs and streaks), and usually one in between.

The magnifier is essential, and not only for those of us with eyes that don't work as well as they used to. Its amazing what a difference this makes to your painting (and modelling). Mine is from Lincraft and has LED lights in it (which I must find the adaptor for). I also have that black desk lamp. If you can't see what you are doing, modelling is really hard.

As my hands become wobblier (I shouldn't have had that second coffee today) I usually sit the model (or lean the hand holding it) on something (that raised clear box). The fewer moving parts to the puzzle the better when stabbing away with the brush. 

Adding a little colour

DB awakens:

You may recall a few silly expositions about paint colours on models a few years ago, and more recently, I've been agonizing over colors so that I can buy some paint and thus make some progress on a 9mm DG I've been working on for about a decade now.

Agonizing, because as Dave Turner would say, you can make colour look "accurate" and you can make it look "good", but those two are not always the same thing - sometimes our perception is skewed by a bunch of factors that were discussed in that aforementioned post. 

An embarrassing example of this in my models (and in my photoshopping) that I've suspected for a while but have recently proved:  I've tended to make my fruit salad and kiwirail international oranges too 'red'. It's my preference, but I have an inkling its not right – and I should be getting as close to "accurate" as possible and tweaking subtly from there.

Kevin Crossado for years has kindly put the British Standard (BSC) paint codes in model railway journal articles, but unfortunately those don't mean much to most people - even if you go to most professional places to go to get paints mixed up they don't want to hear about them. What you need is to be able to convert those BSC codes into something they understand.

So here's a useful website that has the BSC colors – for example international orange is…: http://www.e-paint.co.uk/Lab_values.asp?cRange=BS%20381C&cRef=BS381%20592&cDescription=International%20orange

This conveniently gives us some more useful conversion tools that let me to match an RAL colour that Resene Auto and Industrial have in their multi-volume book of paint swatches. Of course I thought this looked too "orange" and not "red" enough, so I borrowed the swatch book and ran it down to the Timaru yards in the hope of finding a KiwiRail DSG. Soon enough a pair of DFTs came through on a train and ...I was proved wrong. Despite their grunginess, KiwiRail Persimmon is Fruit Salad International Orange - and both are far orangier than I expected.

Super useful on that weblink are the RGB (red/green/blue) values familiar to many users of imaging and design software. 

From this, here's an even more useful site for modelers:  http://scalemodeldb.com/paint which lets us enter RGB values (international orange is 206/79/55) to give us the closest match in model paints!!! You can filter by brand to just pick Humbrol or Vallejo or whatever you prefer; and presto.

So since Humbrol seems to be the common brand around these parts, I'm going to try Insignia Yellow 154, Dark Slate Grey 224, and Satin Red 132 and I'll let you know how they go.

Scalemodeldb.com/paint

Sort of product review

As there is not much modeling going on here at the moment, I thought I would post a new product review. OK, so its not new, but new to me.

Over the years I have used many different paint brands. Starting off with good old Humbrol enamels in the early 80's (and the cleanup hassles), then  discovering the eastern exotics of Tamiya and the wonders of acrylics. Floquil just passed me by as it was a brand that never made it out into the wilds of the South Island.
In Wellington I eventually discovered Vallejo acrylics during my wargaming phase, which was a step up from Tamiya. more recently in Nelson I started using Citadel/warhammer colours, which again had its own set of pluses and minuses. However I always came back to Humbrol for some shades that no one else seemed to do as well.

 OK, so at this point I guess I should comment on the minuses I see in each of the brands.

Humbrol- The lids should win a queens award for "just what the hell were they thinking!" The paint dries up (matt) or forms skins no matter how hard the lids go on. Requires a ready supply of turps to keep the brushes clean.

Tamiya-A wide selection of colours for the wargamer, but with some odd gaps. The paint is OK, but the pigments crash out of suspension without warning. The lids can gum shut

Valljo- Great system for getting small amounts of paint out, and seals shuts so no drying out. covers really well, but has to be sealed as it rubs off really easy.

Now despite these comments, there are still places where I use all these paints to best utilise there unique properties

Recently in one of the 2 model shops in Palmy, I discovered that Humbrol now does acrylics.
The tin lid is gone, replaced by a plastic screw lid. The paint (so far) seems to cover well, and doesn't seem to rub off.

Only one problem. there are 2 ranges, a railroad authentic range and a standard range. I managed to try to open the standard range upside done without reading the clear instructions. Oh, and the standard range has a pop lid (which I did not notice till looking at it tonight)

I still maintain its not clearly labeled.

Once the modeling bench is set up again I'll do some more in depth testing to get a better idea of just what the Humbrol acrylics will and  won't do.

Oh, and I can't comment on how any of these paints in an airbrush. I've never used one, and don't see myself starting.

Tagged: finishing that ZH

DB says: Its about time I finished off that ZH...

A while back I stumbled upon AA654's photostream on Flickr, which now that I type this, makes me wonder what we ever did before Al Gore invented the world wide internets. I never used to be able to pick up this sort of thing on the wireless.

AA654 (a modeler I'm betting) has some really neat side-on detail pics of wagons in 'real-life' rather than 'ex-works' condition, and I hope he (or she (but he looks like a he)) doesn't mind if I borrow a few of them for this blog post and a ZH or two. I know that most modelers refuse on principle (or principal if you are a headmaster) to graffiti up their stuff, preferring to support up-and-coming taggers by knifing them, but the unfortunate reality is that most of the ZHs seem to carry unofficial paint schemes, and that's what I had in mind for this one. Being open minded and all. And I left my bayonet in my other trousers.

A little copying and pasting later had me printing a few ZH sides out, figuring this would make finishing the model super easy with a single decal containing Tranz Link logos plus graffiti plus built-in weathering. Ta-da:


Well, that looks like shite doesn't it. While the ALPS printers are pretty good at printing vector-drawings of logos and things onto decals, they're not that good at doing full-colour bitmappy style prints (remember my Kiwirail logo on the front of DX5293?)

After a bit of internet sleuthing, it seems that this dotty pixelated gritty grottiness is just the way things are with this printer and/or the XP drivers. So plan B had me thinking about removing the weathering from the pictures (which was where the graininess was showing up most) and just hanging onto the graffiti/logos. And then later I could weather over the top of them.

So after an afternoon at a bar eating nachos, drinking mimosas, watching sports I don't understand ("Hey, that was a forward pass!") and playing in Photoshop I was left with:

Hmmm, that looks a bit more promising. Which is a good thing as I'm out of decal paper...

Straight outta the South Auckland paint booth

And a little weathering later:

Yes, I know, there are different wagon numbers on each side for variety. I washed some brown on the ends and dark browny/back on the underbits, including the very bottom of the doors and then sprayed some 'dirt' on the top and sides.

The sprayed stuff probably should be a little less red and a bit yellower next time; I need to get into the beautifully lasered handgrabs on the door sides with some dark wash; and I might reapply some of the graffiti decals over the weathering if I can be bothered, to make it look fresh.
So the rating still stands: the laser cut ZH, while being a little scary and requiring some post-melt remediation to ends and unders, builds up into a very nice model for those into the modern scene.

Now to crank out a few more...

Send Evan some money to get one in its current state. If I have any unused decals leftover, I'll offer them up on the blog and/or nz120.org classifieds.

Coal Range: weathering the coal container saga

DB says: From the About Bloody Time file, here is the final installment of the HLC series. The assembled vehicles were tarped, ghetto-decaled with wee black squares and yellow panels.Weathering on the containers was washes of Model Master matte acrylics. For my first year or so of NZR scratchbuilding in S scale, I never weathered anything. Then I went through a phase of attacking my pristinely awful models with Humbrol Black paint thinned with turps. Hi Tech I know. About five years in I discovered Faber Castell chalks at a Dunedin art shop (the dry ones, not the greasy ones) and sandings of these applied with a stubbly paint brush gave things a nice sooty or dusty look until you sealed it with matte varnish or touched it with your greasy paws.

Over the past few years in American N and now NZ120, I've gone back almost exclusively to washes, but this time using a wider range of acrylic colours thinned with alcohol (the rubbing kind, not the drinking kind). Strangely enough, I've never used an airbrush to weather anything, but I'm sure that time will come.These HLCs mainly used Gull Gray (this has to be my real find of the last few years) on the tarps, a bit of Black here and there in the corners to represent coal dust and Desert Sand as brake dust on the sides. Sometimes I'll mix the colours, sometimes I thin them more, sometimes less, sometimes I apply rust dots unthinned and smear them down with a finger to represent rust streaks, sometimes I'll apply the thinned wash and wipe most of it off with a cotton bud. Sometimes I'll drybrush with a lighter version of the base colour. Often I'll wash the underbits darker than the upper bits. When you start to look closely at prototypes, the weathering is rarely black, so don't be afraid to experiment with other colours. Usually, the more the merrier. On an upcoming UK wagon post I used a really bluey gray wash on bits and this worked out surprisingly well. As Mao's Little Red Book of Huoche Weathering states: once you go black, you'll always come back.

Weathering is quite an art and there is some amazing work being showcased on a number of websites. Here's one to get you started.

On the first pair of HLCs from a few weeks back, I used thin styrene as the metal bars used to roll the tarps from one side to the other, but these stuck out like the proverbial dog's testes, so today I found some very old, very fine steel piano wire instead and contact glued it onto the tarps (between the corner posts). This has some rust spots on it as well. For added authenticity.

The one you have all been waiting for..

Well, for those of you who want to know how to paint figures that is.

In this post I'm going to go through my 'simple' method for painting figures. I've been painting figures like this for 20 years or so (ever since I was painting figures for Railmaster for export to keep myself feed while doing my masters). This method may not work for you, but it works for me and will give you acceptable results in the minimum time. Those who really want to go to town can search out many of the excellent fantasy and military miniatures painting sites out there on the web. However I've used this system to paint batches of 60-100 figures at a time, and for most people it will be more than good enough.

At this point I should point out that you should have a rough knowledge of clothes colours in the period that you are modeling. Otherwise people are going to point out that hot pink shirts are a bit out of place in your 1950's country station.

(I'll apologise for the pictures now. they sort of relate to the writing but I've done somethings out of order as my brain tends to wander a bit during the job. sorry)

To start with I suppose there will be the chat on brushes and paints.

Brushes;

I tend to buy Tamiya. These are widely available, are quite cheap and hold a point really well after a lot of hard use. I've tried artists brushes but they always seem to wind up looking like a bush. whatever you choose it will need to have a good point, and not much smaller than OO size. anything smaller will not hold enough paint to work with (however I have been known to paint with brushes with 5-6 bristles for some really fine jobs).

Paints;

I use a wide mix of Humbrol, Tamiya and Vallejo. Humbrol enamals are the old bog standard. they cover well, and if they were not sold in those silly tinlets would be great (the paint always forms a skin inside no matter how hard I try to keep the lids on tightly). Tamiya acrylics are good to use, but can go a bit odd as they can dry a bit fast. Vallejo are really nice to use, and cover well. they do have a tendency to scrape off quite easily, so a coat of matt varnish is a must. I've not had any experence with any of the other modeling paints available out there (games workshop etc). I would choose acrylics over enamals as they are much easier to clean up and less toxic. Whatever you do, do NOT use house paint. This will just result in 'blob men', which considering how much time you spend on everything else for your layout, is like drinking casked wine every night for the rest of your life ( or Tui beer)

Right, todays victims are some of the Priesler TT scale figures, kindly 'lent' to me for this purpose by ECMT and Wes.

Preparation;

I've tried two methods of painting here. 1/2 the figures have been left on the sprue so that they are easier to handle (but mostly so I could tell who's were who's). First up remove any plastic flash left over from the moulding process. This was not so easy on the figures attached to the sprue. Some people also advocate washing the figures with water and detergent. I've never really bothered with this for plastic figures. An undercoat of some paint is next. this can be either brushed on or sprayed. Choose a light colour (the best probably being light grey). For some odd reason I've chosen Humbrol flesh. Make sure everything is covered, but don't make the coat too thick.


Painting;

I paint from the inside out mostly. this means starting at the skin and slowly working outwards to the outer layers of clothing.
First up is to paint the flesh. get a good covering and don't worry about going over onto clothes etc as we will be painting over any splash later. Next up is shirts. These tend to be lighter colours ie whites, creams etc. I select 2-3 colours for this. laying the figures out paint every 2nd or 3rd one a particular colour (depending on whether you have 2-3 colours). We are going to continue this sort of process with the rest of the areas, and eventually will wind up with no identical figures. take the 2nd colour and starting at the second figure again paint every 2nd or 3rd one. repeat with the 3rd colour. Again, splash these on EXCEPT where they come up to the flesh areas. here you will carefully paint up to the line. try to get the edge as clean/straight as possible. Its not the end of the world if you can't, but it will look better later. Womans shirts and T shirts tend to be brighter colours.

Next after this is ties. I select dark colours (greys and blues). paint a straight line from the top of the shirt to the bottom running over to the jacket where necessary.

We then move down to the opposite end of things. Pants and skirts. Again select several colours (3-4, but one more than the shirt colours) I normally would pick a mid grey, black, blue and possibly a khaki for the men, and some lighter colours for the women (possibly some greens and browns or even red if you are feeling adventurous). Paint these on using the same method for the shirts and ties (ie every x'ed figure where x is the number of paints you have choosen) and if the figures shirt touches the pants/skirt paint carefully up to this line and try not to go over it. Also try not to go over any flesh colours as well. If you do, just leave it till the clean up at the end.


Are we having fun yet? Jackets are next. These tend again to be darker colours (greys, and browns, maybe greens). Paint these on as previously, but now with a bit more care as there are multiple areas where you will be approaching previously painted colours. Again just paint up to the line between the colours, and try not to go over it.


Now we are into the easy stuff. Bags and other accessorys can be painted. Bags tend to be leather and only really colourful in more modern periods. you can have a go at painting the starps, but its not easy, and will be dealt with in a later step mostly.

Hair is quite simple. I only use 4 colours, Black, brown, a light brown/yellow ( Tamiyas desert yellow is very good), and grey. Choose a mid to light grey. You will probably not be able to see the hair moulding, so just use a bit of common sense to apply this where you think looks right. Don't be afraid to experiment with facial hair (for men) but make sure that it doesn't look out of period.
Finally finish up by doing any hats etc. These can be any colour really.
Opps, almost forgot the shoes. I paint mine mostly black or brown, but for modern periods almost anything goes.

We now have a couple of finishing steps. First up, take each colour in turn that you have used and go over all the figures that you have painted and touchup any flaws, or bits that you have missed previously.

The next two step really tidy things up. Brush on a 1:1 mix of Tamiya smoke (X19) and water which will run into all the crevices and joins between colours. It adds shadows as well.

Left to right; Mr and Mrs Goring return with the shopping; 'No, my wife is at home'; 'Should not have brought that cheap watch in Singapore'; 'See spot run....'; 'Wish I'd brought a book'; A full head of hair; A model of me 20 years ago; 'Go the Naki'; Nondescript child.

Secondly, give each figure a VERY light drybrush with a light colour ( I use Vallejo 'iraqi sand'). Dip the tip of a widish soft brush in the paint, and then wipe it mostly dry on a tissue. This should leave a very light dusting on paint on the bristles. Brush this very lightly over the figures and it should highlight the raised areas. Be very careful as its easy to overdo.

I find these steps improve the look quite significantly, making you appear to be a far better painter than you really are.

One final step once you are happy with everything is to seal it all with a coat of matt varnish. Make sure that this is properly mixed, as it can do funny things.

Having painted both batches now, I would be inclined to paint as much of the figure as possible on the sprue. its much easier to handle figures this size, and you don't have to keep touching them untill later in the process.

I have added a thread on Nz120.org so that we can further discuss this topic and answer any questions etc that anyone might have on any of this.

In Living Colour: Painting what where.

DB says, somewhat verbosely after a bottle of cheap champagne:

I’ve been fortunate to spend some time in the digital darkroom with DLA Turner over the past year and this exposure (haha) has heightened my awareness (not expertise, alas!) of colour, and this can be useful for a modeler. Sometimes colours can be obvious: ...Toll Rail Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi locos use a very pale vomit-coloured yellow, which contrasts sharply with the richer yellows used in our other schemes. Now I know that the Toll yellow is green tinted whereas the Bumblebee yellow is red tinted and more heavily saturated. Why is that useful? Because if I want to mix some paint, I know what colour to add.
My new DX will be a Kiwirail one – so that’s red, yellow and gray. Pretty straightforward you’d think: run out to the shop and buy some Humbrol Trainer Yellow, some Friday Night Lipstick Red and Bland Tax Auditor Gray… But before you buy, take a look at pages 36-37 of the latest (March 09) Railfan mag if you have one to hand.

Look closely at the reds of the KiwiRail locos in this spread. On the left page, compare the two shots from Mike Graham to that of Dave Gallie. The top two are similar, but the bottom red is far richer, darker, deeper, ‘redder’ perhaps. Compare the two bottom pics (5293 at Normanby vs 5454 at Kaiwarra). 5454 almost looks orange in comparison. But which one is the real KiwiRail Persimmon?
Now look at Ken Devlin’s pic of the DFT top right. That entire pic has a greeny/yellow cast to it – look at the gray compared to the other shots. Note how the gray in the bottom right pic is much lighter than the picture bottom left. The two pics from Graham McClare on the right also have a little green tinge in the yellow loco fronts.

Six pictures in one issue of a pretty high quality magazine, and I have maybe three reds, three grays and two yellows to pick from. Now I could paint up my DX in any of those shades and it would look fine, because even if the colours are ‘wrong’ they’ll grow on me and will be my perception of reality. Until that loco gets parked next to someone else’s model and their perception of the KiwiRail scheme.

I was watching those colours carefully a few weeks ago in 1:1 scale so I’m aiming for a red and a yellow like 5293 bottom-left. I reckon the gray in the two Graham McClare pics is right. Yes, that is my final answer. But I could be wrong. Is this really important in NZ120? I dunno, but I do know, (now) that most of the NZ120 models I’ve made before this year have quite incorrect shades of red and blue. They look completely wrong. And I’ve only just noticed.

Long after locos and stations vanish – and even 'now', for those of us without daily access to our modeling subjects – pictures are what we base our models on, so it would be nice if they represented reality not only in sizes and shapes but also in their colour faithfulness. When you’re painting models, see if you can get hold of multiple pictures from multiple sources. If you look carefully, you’ll start to see which photographers, publishers and magazines take time over colour correction and those that don’t.

The key, is to be aware.

Would you prefer blue or bleu?

As an aside... why so many shades of reality?

1. Paint fades over time in the sun – look at DG2111 in it's later stages . Most of our remaining fruit salads have held up well, but reds often darken in time, losing some of their yellow to appear bluer. Then again, sometimes they go pink. DG 772 at Ferrymead was painted last year based on an original shade found on the loco under many layers of paint (I will personally attest). BUT that wasn’t fresh paint. It was exposed to the elements for years, then subjected to a further 50 years of decomposition and sunlight that would filter through subsequent repaints.

2. Different shades can be used. I’m sure this was more prevalent when a thousand country stations were painted with locally mixed paints, but even today, I wonder if DX 5172 has a lighter skippy yellow than the others. DGs carried several shades of red before fruit salad came along, hence the current debate over 772’s new clothes. Early TranzRail blue repaints like DC 4922/4162 had a darker blue than the shade that was eventually settled on. DFT 7160 had a really light blue/gray for some reason.

3. Things weather and get dirty over time – exhaust makes things darker, brake and ballast dust makes the undersides lighter and yellower and redder. Little nicks and chips in the nose fill with dirt. It all loses sheen.

4. Even in 2009, different films record colours differently, and slides, negatives and prints change over time. This makes getting colours ‘right’ in the steam era especially challenging – exacerbated by the fact that colour films were still developing, if you’ll pardon the pun, and their cost limited their widespread use.

5. Lighting affects colour. A colour will look different in the sun vs shade vs cloud, vs haze, vs yard lighting, vs camera flash lighting. Even in full sun, our perception of colour changes dramatically between sunrise to midday to sunset. This has been solved (in theory) in the digital age by white balance correction… if your camera gets it right. Scale matters too. That tiny paint chip of Speed Racer Aqua always looks quite different when you splash it on the big wall in the toilet. And it will look quite different again if you have scarlet carpet in there. I don’t. I’m just making this up.

6. When things change format, someone (or something) makes a judgement call on how to translate formats and how that image should look. For example prints from negatives or prints from a digital camera at the chemist or the Fuji shop; scanning a slide; someone in photoshop or even a digital camera turning photons or data into a compressed, lower quality jpeg file; even printing a magazine - the RGB colours of a computer monitor are surprisingly different from the colour gamut that even a commercial publisher can produce on a CYMK printer.

6a. The web houses the least accurate and consistent colours. Just look at my website. Is your monitor calibrated?

7. Things get ingrained and perceptions get set. You saw a station painted that way at Glenbrook, so that’s naturally how you’ll paint yours. He painted his with Humbrol Trainer Yellow, so I will too. But did they get it right or was that a shade they happened to have lying around or fancied (Ian Welch’s green car on the Parliamentary special)? Most of the ‘modernish’ 4w wagons preserved in NZ are painted up in shades that look nothing like the way I remember them – and that’s just a 20 year old memory. Something tells me that W192 never looked that way 120 years ago either, but that’s what we see, so that’s what we believe.

Food for thought.