Re: D&RG Early Passenger Car Colors

Justin,

I have spent considerable time working out the accurate paint schemes for D&RG/D&RGW cars in the past few years. Much of this comes from newspaper reports, physical research and company diagrams when possible. I am still working on a great number of reference illustrations and hopefully a set of articles in the future covering this topic. Here is a run down:

1871 - 1875: Cars were a dark brown, likely a shade of Lake. A newspaper in Denver called it "Brown or Cinnamon Color", which is likely a Madder Lake.
The roof color is unknown but dark, it would have been a complimentary color to the body NOT black.


D&RG Smoking Car #3 in Scarlet Lake and brown roof. This illustration is unfinished, I still need to draw the arabesques and striping for the corner posts.

1875 - 1880s: Wine color on the body, drab (light khaki) on the roof. Higher class cars had gold leaf, the rest had yellow (imitation gold). Drop shading was blue. Black on corner posts and crown moldings. In this era the cars retained filigree on the corners similar to what C&TS has on their non-historic freight cars (though connected with a solid box stripe). Trucks were brown with a fawn/orange color and black edging on the pedestals from Jackson & Sharp.


I do not have a finished illustration for this era, but here are paint layers from the original Jackson & Sharp 4' wheelbase trucks that were once under D&RG mail car #14 later Excursion Car #566. These trucks are now at the Colorado Railroad Museum and I was allowed to perform some research on them. 566 became MOW O566 in 1904 which kept the trucks from being rebuilt or replaced like others were. This is also not the best photograph but I was able to match the layers to the Pantone color system to document the layers.

1890s - 1918: Wine/Tuscan body with drab roof and reduced striping. Filigree goes away and simple striping is used.Trucks are "standard truck color (brown)". Drop shading is discontinued before 1900.


By the mid 1890s the drop shading on passenger cars went away. Samples of tuscan red were found on coach 292 during the feasibility study. The truck brown comes from O566's trucks.


By 1900 the striping was reduced and by the teens the black accent on corner posts went away and the entire car body was painted tuscan red.

1918 - late 1930s:
Pullman Green with Prince's Mineral Color roofs. Pullman Green trucks. No striping. Imitation gold lettering.


Prior to 1902 the D&RG painted their standard gauge cars in Pullman Color, a shade of brown (not green). In February 1900 the Pullman Company changed their color from brown to green and noted it in their records. Paint and lettering diagrams for standard gauge D&RG/WP passenger cars call out "Sherwin Williams Pullman Color (New)" with "Pullman Shade" trucks. Narrow gauge cars remained tuscan until 1918 when they were switched to the same scheme as the standard gauge cars to save money. Roofs are called out Prince's Mineral Color from the early 1900s through the 1920s. Princes Mineral Color is the same color used on D&RG freight cars from the 19th century until 1920 when they switched to the freight car red used until the end of operation.

1930s - 1950s:
Pullman Green, black roof, black trucks, imitation gold lettering.

1950s - Onward: Aspen Gold body with silver roof and trucks. Black striping and lettering.

I hope this helps clear things up.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2020 10:44PM by Andrew Brandon.