Good question

I tested  craft paints on plastic models and found  they do not respond well to any handling. I know the small test I did on doors and the paint scratched too easily for my liking so I wonder what it would do on a box car.

I wanted to try it with a primer to see if this made any difference. Have not got around to it.

As to box car red, there should be something close enough. But would it take decals without issue.

Marc

Craft Paints

I have used craft paints on many models. The secret is to us a primer and then a coat of testors (or any brand really) of Dull Cote to protect the finish. For decals simply  use a coat of clear gloss followed by Dull Cote. I have had no issues. As far as a color for boxcar red, a little experimenting may be needed, but I am sure a suitable shade can be mixed. (don't mix different brands! They may not mix very well) Good luck

Boxcar red

There is no one color that railroads painted their boxcars (or other cars for that matter).   Colors changed over time.  The B&O used a chocolate brown in the 1800's and early 1900's and went to a more reddish color.  The PRR freight car color was more orange in the 1800's and early 1900's.

There are several suitable dark red, reddish brown, barn red or brick red colors that can be used.  If you are trying to match a particular paint brand of boxcar red, it might take some mixing.

Boxcar red

Dave hit the nail on the head.  We have 35 heralds from the actual paint shops of the railroads from the 1950s in our club and a majority of them have a boxcar red background. I don't think any two of them have the same shade of boxcar red!

So your best bet for the correct color is to eyeball it from a color photograph. Also paint fades with the sun so will get lighter over time.

And one other note the color of the plastic you are painting over will affect the shade, granted all the cars I have seen recently are black, but I have seen white plastic in older freight car bodies.

Thanks

Ok should have been a bit more detailed. What I am working on is an old On3 wood reefer kit. It's been put together for a few years and 1/2 painted. Being inbetween projects I thought I would find some paint that is a close match I hope and finish it up. My reason for the color choice is that being a free lanced RR the owner got a great deal on the paint, so most or all of the cars got box car red with white lettering. I'll post a photo when I get back.

The info about box car red color is interesting. Had no idea that there was such a wide variety of the same color. I am off to the LHS to see what if any paint choices they have and maybe Michaels depending on what I find.

Plastic and craft paint is a royal pain in the irritation. I have used it on windows and doors. Several coats after a bath and no extra handling. Long term staying power???? don't know yet.

Jack

Box Car Red

For an interesting BCR (now it appears the common abbreviation for box car red) I have been using Vallejo Model Color which will brush to a nice flat surface without stroke marks. Vallejo can be found in some craft stores but the best selections are in War Gamer stores.  Be sure the model's surface has been cleaned and is dust free.

Two interesting colors:

70.982 Cavalry Brown is a good ruddy brown

70.984 Flat Brown is just that, but it has enough red in it to pass for some darker BCR's

I mix the two 1 drop of each (Vallejo comes in dropper bottles) to get a red brown that approximates SP BCR used on most SP freight cars of the 1947-54 period I model and PFE ice car ends and roofs.

I use Tamiya Clear Coat to create a surface for decaling and seal the Vallejo paint. I usually wait overnight to be sure the decals have fully set.  I live in a usually dry climate, but if you have humidity it might take longer.

After the decaling I spray with Model Master Lusterless (flat) rattle can sprays.   I weather after the flat spray using powders or chalks and then spray with MM Lusterless again to fix. Dullcoat works just as well as Lusterless but you can find Model Master paints in a larger variety of hobby outlets whereas Dullcoat is usually found in Train stores.

Ken Adams

My thoughts on using craft paints on highly detailed models

You can use craft paints on things like scenery without much of a problem, although because the paints are cheap and intended more for things like kids posters and school room crafts, they're generally not colorfast. In other words, the color they have today may not be the color they have in a few years.

Artist acrylics, on the other hand, are formulated to be colorfast for decades, if not 100 years or more.

When it comes to painting a highly detailed model with craft paints straight, I am very leery. My concerns are:

• Cheap acrylic resin
• Pigments not intense or finely enough ground
• How colorfast is unknown (cheap price suggests not)
• Color control between batches minimal

A couple years ago now, Railroad Model Craftsman had an article on using craft acrylics to replace PollyScale. The main observation by the author was craft paints have a really cheap acrylic base, so his solution was to upgrade the acrylic base with a high quality artist's acrylic base. So in summary, here is his process:

• Add a high-quality acrylic base (artist acrylic medium)
• Add flow aid so paint flows nicely
• “PollyScale equivalent” formula (1 oz / 30 ml) bottle

Formula:

• 15 ml craft paint ($0.36)
• 15 ml Liquitex acrylic medium ($0.95)
• 2.5 ml flow aid ($0.23)
• Yield: 32.5 ml of paint ($1.54 per bottle or ~5 cents / ml)

The caveats are: No guarantees on color fastness and no guarantees on mixing colors – diluting the pigment with an acrylic base will generally result in muted colors if you further mix the resulting home-made paints using this formula. The trick is to blend your final color first using the full-strength craft acrylics and *then* add the acrylic medium. Avoid mixing the concocted paints together for colors intended to go on fine models unless muddy colors are the goal.

Personally, I have stopped using craft paints on my finely detailed models. I find the Vallejo Model Air/Game Air line works great, as does the Testors Model Master Acryl line, and the Badger MODELflex paints. For more on using these paints, get the MRH Guide to Acrylic Painting which is available for download free to MRH subscribers. The guide includes paint formulas to match the defunct Floquil / Pollyscale paint line.

A nice tool for getting exact color

Golden Artist paints has an online color mixer that allows you to formulate a color from a photo or color sample, using of course their paints. It allows you to select how many colors to use, and which type of paint. If you are going to be doing a lot of the same color, it might be a useful addition to your repertoir.

http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer/

Paint

Learning all sorts of bits of stuff here.

Joe, thanks for the tips on craft paint. Not being a tech guy of any sort, most of that kind of info just slides right out. It is unfortunately the way my brain works. Chalk it up to a childhood injury. I will take a look a look at the Vallejo paint info you made. I have avoided it for the above reason. My biggest concern is how well does it work with using a paint brush. Guess I see if I can find out.

Anyway I made it to the LHS and he just happen to have a thin supply of paint from several manufactures. One of which was Polly Scale after Floquil bought them out? if I am remembering right. Found a variation of frt car red. It is suppose to be for the D&RGW. Seems to be a close match to what I used. If not I'll just start over with the paint job.

Also found some rail brown from Tru Color Paint.

Jack 

Vallejo Acrylics Brush Painting

Jack

If you are brush painting models be sure to use Vallejo Model Color and not Vallejo Model Air/Game Air which are formulated for air brushing. Excellent results can be had with brush painting with Vallejo Model Color. 

Ken 

Rustoleum

I often use Rustoleum from ace Hardware and give the model a LOT of light coats. If you find it is too difficult to handle then spray some into a jar to dilute a little for the airbrush. I've had lots of luck finding the right shade of "red" for freight cars in On30. 

Ken & Neil

Thanks for the tip. Life is still crazy. Found some Polly Scale D&RG freight car brown on my last trip to the hobby shop. Used it and well for anybody interested it makes a great dirt brown depending on where you live. It worked. Ken thanks for clarifying that difference. I plan on picking some up. Neil I thought about using a rattle can. I still have some paint cans from when we moved. Didn't think about them and I just might have some already. sigh....

Interesting thing about this Polly Scale stuff is it is pretty thin and since I didn't try for an excellent paint job the car looks weathered. Needs some india ink to give it a bit of sooty look and some lettering. Lettering I have is pretty old and is rub on so I am going to escape next week and get lettering and india ink next week. If I don't come home will all of life's craziness move somewhere else????

Jack

Brush painting Model Air

That's not been my experience. Model Color is *extremely thick* like sour cream and almost always needs thinned to make it brushable so it doesn't obscure the model details. Model Air, on the other hand, is very brushable without thinning. If you need it a little thicker, just get some acrylic matte varnish and mix a little of it into the paint. To find acrylic matte varnish just look on Amazon: amzn.com/B000KNPLTM.

I seldom need to do this with Model Air, however. In my experience, it brush paints just fine straight from the bottle ... and in fact I always thin Model Air a bit more (20% thinner to 80% color) when I airbrush it. Model Color, on the other hand *always* needs considerable thinning to make it truly brushable.

Because Model Air also brushes well and I can make it thicker if needed (rare) with the trick above, I only need to carry *one* line of paint colors, not two, in my paint supply. As an additional consideration, Vallejo also says the pigment grind on Model Air is finer than the grind on Model Color. Because Model Color has a more coarse grind, Vallejo does not recommend using it in an airbrush.

I did find...

Hi all, 

While attending a visit to Knotts Berry Farm, as part of the Pasadena National Narrow Gauge Convention, I spotted the paint mix for these:

while on an escorted tour of the workshop area, on the corner of a whiteboard, 

Now, given that this sign

 
was prominently displayed in the rafters of the workshop that specifies the degree of workmanship required to be part of the crew, and, given the high quality of their restoration work on their rolling stock fleet, then if its good enough for the Knotts Berry Farm Rail Maintenance Shop, then this paint mix can't be too far off being accurate. 

Walking back to the bus, and talking to some of the other conventioneers on this trip, I think I was the only one who knew what I saw, So now you all know, 

Formula

Since there are no ratios stated in the formula I guess it is all equal parts of each color.

I tried googling and vista paint colors are all four digit numbers.  I could not locate any of those paint colors, did you happen to see any paint cans?

Re: Formula

Hi Jim and all,

I had a good look at all the photos I got that day and didn't catch a single paint can either sealed or open on its second use as a trash can or similar.

My feeling is that this is not a standard Vista paint colour (which is why its not in their 4-number catalog), but rather the mix of colours for the paint mix machine at a hardware store, These are the actual settings for the paint mixer of the various tints that are added to the Vista semi-gloss "Base-A". acrylic enamel paint type to get a repeatable "box car red". These settings ensure that the  Knots Berry Farm Rail Maintenance Shop gets the same "Box Car Red" every time they need more 'Box Car Red" paint.

In the days before paint mixing machines, every workshop would have used their own version of "box car red". And with variations in paint pigments and changes in paint supplier, I'll bet that the "box car red" from even one car shop changed over time. Plus it was also subject to the vagaries of the chief painter's whims ("That looks a bit too ???, add a splash of this and stir it in")

This is probably about "as good as it gets" for a known "box car red" paint mix. This mix was probably based on the past "Box-Car Red" colour of their fleet and the mix will have changed as more durable and longer-lasting paint types have been developed to get the the same colour when dry. 

CAUTION: This is a 1:1 scale paint mix. with 1:1 scale industrial paint pigments. It is unlikely for the smaller scales that this could be sprayed or brushed to give an acceptable model finish. The paint pigments we use on our smaller scale models are usually much more finely ground. For Jim and his model engineers in larger scales, this may be a way forward to a definitive and repeatable "freight car red"    

Brush painting

Sorry about that Joe, but it has not been my experience. I have been able to get thin opaque coats with Vallejo Model Color paints.  The VMC paints I use do not seem to have the course grind you are reporting.

Ken Adams

Acrylic Craft Paint

I have been using acrylics for years, I could not take the fumes of Floquil. I started out using Delta Ceramcoat that you can get from Michaels, Hobby Lobby etc. I model in On3 and have been looking for a faded boxcar red for years. Here is my formula that captures that look, all Delta colors. I use 60% Maroon, 40% Old Parchment. This will give you a color that is too pink. Add drops of Autumn Brown until you get that faded out look.  Adding different amounts of the brown will give you slightly different shades. I have never had a problem with this paint coming off, in fact after a few days you will have to soak it in alcohol to get it off. Granted, acrylics tend to gum up an air brush so I thin them out pretty well and just keep cleaning the tip every so often. Delta also has a color, Charcoal Gris, that is a great weathered black for stock cars and what have you. Hope this helps.

 "acrylics tend to gum up an

Hi JD,   Do you thin the Delta Ceramcoat with water or some thinner type of product? ......DaveB 

Here it is

As I stated in another post we are moving. I have spent the last month packing and I think we are about 75% there. Good enough for reality photos and house is now listed. So since I didn't work myself into a nearly unconscious state today I pulled out some rub on lettering and labeled the car. In my room lighting it looks brown. Still need to put some India ink mix on it but that is going to have to wait until after we move.

I was very surprised to see this question in MRH this month, and that is part of what got me to getting this done, so thanks for that.

 Jack