On the interior, I’m happy. The “King’s Gold” from the British Paints range and the “Deep Indian Red” from the Colourbond range are just about perfect matches, as you can see elsewhere in the blog. But I said that for the main colour for the exterior, originally a Tuscan Red, the best match was a colour called “Headlands” from the Colourbond range. Well, as you can see here, “Headlands” leaves the carriage a bit in the pink!
The three panels on the left are painted in the wrong colour, except for the droplights picked out in Deep Indian Red. Compared to the Heritage Red that I had previously used on the right, you can see that the new colour is just not right!
I’ve actually got a long history of trying to track down the exterior colours for 1072 which was complicated by my original lack of appreciation that the main red being different from the red on the droplights. The latter red is Deep Indian Red as used on the internal trim. This tale of two reds became apparent when I visited the Ipswich Carriage Works Museum in 2009 where 1074 is preserved in original condition and livery.
So anyway, after a period of painting a largish area of the carriage in ‘Headlands”, I was able to confirm that this is indeed the wrong colour. I picked this colour based on those little sample cards you can get in the paint shops. I pressed on for a while, painting away in what felt like the wrong colour just to confirm that opinion. As you can see, it took me a fair bit of painting before I was convinced that I was wrong!
But all was not lost! Previously in my search for the perfect red, I had purchased a litre of Colourbond “Bright Red” base, which was obviously a mistake! The toplights I painted with this looked like they belonged on a fire engine. But seeing that Headlands was not red enough and I had some bright red to play with, I combined the two and voila! Still not perfect but close enough to use as an undercoat to the eventual correct topcoat, when I figure out what that is.
The new hybrid red, a bit more like it! I've only used it around the windows here but you can see that it is see it is a better match to the Heritage Red and more like the original Tuscan Red.
So I’ve used this better hybrid colour to cover details in my latest fix-ups; in this case the last 3 drop lights to be attached to the carriage. It’s all one step back but two steps forward!
You might never find the perfect colour. I can't speak for QR, but down in vic it was a bit of a railway honor to create your own colour (named after you) and have it used on rolling stock. Freight Australia rolling stock was painted in M.V.O. Green and M.V.O. yellow. M stood for Marinus, V for "Van" and O for Onselen. Marinus Van Onselen was the CEO of Freight Australia and he selected the custom colour blends himself. How do I know this? I was the project engineer and I had to order batches of the stuff or it would hold up my locomotive build project (X class locos....now known as XR) because components had to be pre-painted before they went in. I also had to send suppliers the custom blend recipe to get stuff painted off site. There was simply no equivalent for it in the standard colour blends offered by the major suppliers. It was a real bitch. Anyway, felt like sharing. Hope your problem is a different one!
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