Re: Color used on C&S Cabeese?

Hi Dave and Ned,

They were painted a red color, which was described to me by old C&S vererans as being the same color as other freight equipment.

The roof would still be whatever shade of flat black suits your fancy, but otherwise everything would be red.

For specific color, Floquil's "Zinc Chromate Primer" is a nice color quite remeniscent of Harry Brunk's formula mix from the 80's which blended Floquil's Caboose Red and Boxcar Red. Both of those colors have been considerably altered by Floquil over the years and I would not use either. Brunk was convinced that the C&S color was more red than the D&RGW color and I mixed up a pretty good supply of it. That's why I suggest the Zinc Chromate color, as you'll never be able to mix that color using the new versions of these Floquil colors.

Another color, this one acrylic, that is virtually a dead ringer for the good old original Floquil Boxcar Red is Tamiya's "Linolium Deck Brown". This color is still available in a spray can, but the small bottles are currently unavailable from Japan as a lingering result of the earthquake and tsunami.

I would suggest for a well maintained, and fairly recently painted caboose, use Zinc Chromate Primer, for an older, more seasoned look, use Linolium Deck Brown, which is in my opinion, by far the best commercially available standard color for Boxcar Red.

Good luck, I think you'll be happy with one or the other of these.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 07:09PM by Mike Trent.