Re: US Army diesels in WW2?

Yeah, a lot of RR stuff was grey during WW1 and I think that carried over to WW2.
The reason I brought all this up was I recently got this On30 gauge Whitcomb 50-tonner and was wondering what would be the most correct color to paint it and still use black lettering:

I created some decals for it in black, based on period photos of Army diesels, in a WW2 block style stencil I downloaded from the internet. In another stencil typeface, I copied some markings I saw on an Army locomotive citing when the test runs were made and where (the Holabird Depot, where the very first Jeeps were tested at), and I’ll probably put those on the “F” end of the hood. It has a date at the end of February, 1943 but the letters will be too small to be easily read. I’ll know they’re there, though.
Looking at the locomotive, I was thinking how tempting it’d be just to keep the body in the yellow paint and just paint the running gear (as I can’t find any photos of any Army diesels with safety stripes earlier than the 50s). The yellow paint job was a factory-offered option by Whitcomb, so it’s historically correct. But by doing so, I wonder if it’d be seen as a cop-out. I bet the grey would look nice, too, but I’d have to get the repaint looking PERFECT as it should look like a new locomotive. For sure, I’m not going to weather it much due to how new it’d have been at that time. Just a light dry-brushing of dust and grime around the moving parts and exhaust stacks.



szuiderveen Wrote:
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> Maybe black in WW II, but trench locos in WW I
> were battleship grey.
>
> Steve

-Lee

Flickr photo set of my On30 layout