Dave, Horse, Bob,

Just so you know that I do pay attention to reality, here's a little something I wrote in our division's newsletter. Some of you might recognize the reefers.

http://www.keystonedivision.org/news...6_04_color.pdf

I am aware of the blog Eric did on the Pennsy color and reread it the other evening. It probably did influence my choice of color for the gons a little because the Scalecoat color does come out more orange that your basic Floquil box car red, which has some blue in it to my eye. However the Scalecoat color is orange enough for me, partly because it looks credible, and perhaps more importantly, my layout does not have a bright blue puffy cloud studded sky, but rather a seriously gray overcast look. All colors are somwwhat muted. There is not a big contrast between the different boxcar reds on my layout, but that's the way colors look in the real world in overcast conditions.

Couple of comments on the article, which I found pretty good. First, the fully weathered boxcar looks not too far off the Scalecoat color I used, not the orange of the unweathered examples. Second, Eric's comment that weathering will take care of the orange is almost an admission that it is not really the right color.

Mike

OK, so based on discussions of the PRRTHS web forum, articles in the PRRTHS magazine (The Keystone), and miscellaneous readings over the years from multiple sources, I have drawn the conclusion that PRR passenger trains initially came in a variety of colors, as they were painted by the car builders. When PRR began to build their own, and began to standardize, the passenger fleet was painted a medium yellow with black lettering, and a black roof. About 1875/1880 the fleet was modernized, and began being painted in an early variation of Tuscan red. This tended to be a darker red brown than FCC (Freight Car Color), and supported the gold lettering better than the brighter red FCC in use at the time.

By the turn of the 21st century the FCC got a little darker, and that was the basic FCC until merger in 1968.

My point here is that everything I have read/heard suggests that early FCC was more red than the more common box car brown as used by other regional RRs in the area. This was done intentionally to make PRR freight cars a brighter red, than other roads cars to make them more attention getting.

To me, box car red is actually a red shade, not a brown shade. Paints at this time tended to hold their color better than more modern paints for two reasons. Firstly: as Dave points out, all railroad equipment was better maintained early on, as the workers took pride in their equipment, and felt that dirty equipment reflected negatively on them, personally. Secondly: Much of this early paint was lead based, and lead based paints maintain their brightness better/longer, especially in sunlight. Now, it is also true that improperly mixed lead paint tended to get a grey dingy tint in bright sunlight, this was caused by the oxidation of the lead, that was not fully mixed in the paint pigments. Oil based paints were the other common paint used, but oil based was slow to cure (as it never really dries), but once cured, it had a hard outer shell that protected the actual pigments, but if the air had high humidity during the paint curing time, the shell could have an off white tint to it.

You can actually try this yourself. Go to an art supply store, and buy raw pigments. They are a finely ground dust like material. Then do a Bing search for the formulas of period oil, and lead based paints, and follow the recipe. Once you have a batch mixed, paint a plank of wood, keep it protected until it is dry/cured (depending on which you painted), then sit it out in the weather. Cleaning it regularly, as period carmen did, and after a year, compare your outside examples to the swatches you painted, then kept stored protected in doors.

See for your self.

Horse

Last Christmas my wife gave me a set of the Rio Grande machine shop tools. On my trip to the NMRA in Portland OR we visited a woolen mill in Salem, which had a small machine shop in addition to the spinning and weaving machines. So now I am fired up to start on my machines with the eventual goal of building a machine shop patterned after the Sierra RR shop. My shop will be appended to the car shop that I was working on last year--and awaits a tiled roof to complete.

I started small, the power hack saw:





I've started gathering stripwood for the building itself.

Mike

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nice job Mike.

Thanks Bob!

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Making a little progress on my machinery. Recently completed the drill press, planer,and lathe:



My approach is to clean up the parts a little with knife and file, then dip in Blacken-It. Like others I've observed little spots that don't get treated so I poke them with an old stiff brush to get the solution into these spots. Once rinsed off and dried I buff them with a soft cloth or the felt wheel on my Dremel. Areas that would be bright metal I clean with 600 grit paper.

I've been researching these machines to see what parts would have been painted and which would be bare metal. In the process I learned a fair bit on how these machines worked.

I still have to add the belt to the drill press and I misplaced one of the little parts for the lathe.

I'm going to have a total of eight machines and am wondering what size of stationary steam engine I will need to power my shop. I would welcome any suggestions.

Mike

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I doubt that even a dozen machines like this, all running at the same time would use much more low pressure steam than a small stationery boiler could provide. Or, if you have an old, no longer in service locomotive, park it beside the shop, and just use that. That is what the real rail roads did.

Horse

Hi Mike, You only need about a 25HP motor. Unfortunately we in HO have the choice of a 10HP Vertical Steam engine made by SS Ltd and a two 150hp engine made by SS ltd and Rio grande models. That is why I used an "O" scale small Vertical steam engine for my larger shop. Remember you get a lot of inertia in the main line drive staff so a smaller engine will work. The machines would just need to be started one at time.

Mike, I just remembered the Rio Grande Model is coming out with a portable steam engine Kit 3145. Just take off the wheels and mount it on blocks or bricks and it would be perfect.

Horse and Bob,

Thank you for your input. Here's what I have currently:



I have a Western Scale Models boiler, no longer available as far as I know. It's a little large according to the instructions, which say it is for a medium to large shop and generates 60-70 hp. Meanwhile, the engine and boiler look really small, and in fact the instructions say this is for a small sawmill etc. The engine especially looks small. The cylinder is about 15" long. The flywheel is about 2' diameter. The boiler, stack and all is 10' high.

I'll look into the new Rio Grande model.

I think I'll start seeing what I can find on the web as far as stationary steam engine size and hp. Should be fun.

Mike

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Mike, I think the keystone engine is the right size. It needs some additional details, like a governor but, it will do.

Bob,

After a little online research, I think you're right that the Keystone model looks correct, at least as far as the engine goes. I might make a horizontal boiler myself.

I think one of the small parts us the governor. The quality of the castings is really not bad.

Mike

I scratch-built a boiler, it wasn't that hard. It was a good excuse to use up some strange brass loco parts that I had. Brick and metal 'sheet' are old SS Ltd products.



This is smaller than the commercial products (SS Ltd, Western Scale), and will fit better in the boiler house of my Wichendon Machine Shop kit. One of these decades, I need to get back to that build!!!

dave

Those machines look great Michael!

Hakan, Thank you!

Dave, I like the looks of your boiler. How large is it? I might do something similar.

On the other hand, there is an enginehouse near my car shop/machine shop complex. I could have some machines in it, especially if I add an annex. I wonder if it's reasonable to have one boiler provide steam for two engines in separate buildings. Was it done? Any prototype?

Mike

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