What is it? An F&B 0-4-2

[philipy]

Goodness, I actually posted it up with the wrong wheels, these were my wheels.

This is one of mine

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[philipy]

Making progress!
The whole chassis is too long to fit in my printer, so I've split it at the front of the firebox which not only solves that problem but it will give me a self contained 0-4-0 working chassis, plus the cheating pony truck for the unpowered rear (fixed) axle. Should make setting things up much simpler.

I've built a pony truck very much along the lines that Graeme suggested which, subject to actual track trials, seems to be fine ( Thanks as always Graeme).

So this composite picture shows from top to bottom, the top side of the 2 chassis parts, an under view of the same thing and finally an underside view showing how they will be glued together. If you look carefully the motor is just visible in the first view, sitting on a shelf at the bottom of the frames. This shelf also acts as a spacer and gives the motor an gearbox some protection from track grot.

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[tommygander1941]

Its looking good! I've joined the 0-4-2 crew as well, this is arriving tomorrow

[GTB]

Making progress!

You are indeed........

Print quality looks good as well. I take it this is resin printed?

Graeme

[philipy]

Yes, resin Graeme.

I've actually also printed the complete 'smokebox/lower half of boiler/firebox with dome', all as one piece. It only finished printing a couple of hours before we came away for a week so I didn't have time to do more than UV cure it, but at a quick look it seemed OK. Proper piccy of it next week with luck, but this is in slicer

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[Trevor Thompson]

I am impressed - something else that I had in mind making myself one day!

Trevor

[Old Man Aaron]

Looking very good.

[philipy]

As promised, the firebox/boiler/smokebox print. So far so good.....

The batteries are just to check for fit atm. The slot in the top of the firebox is to locate the bottom of the cab front sheet. I thought it easier to do it like this than try to get a curve on the bottom of the front sheet that exactly fitted the top of the firebox.

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[StuartJ]

The slot is an excellent idea! I will have to remember that...

[philipy]

OK, all the main parts and some of the smaller ones are now printed and ready to be put together. The only large part to be done is the saddle tank.

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[philipy]

OK, I'm back to the question I seem to ask every time I build a loco...paint colour!

As far as I can ascertain, nobody actually knows what colour these 2 loco's were painted. The choice seems to be between Manning Wardle's standard house green or the FR's "Indian red" and the Indian red seems to be what folks have plumped for, historically. My loco's are mostly painted with Rover Brooklands Green unless there was a specific reason for something else i.e. the Gmeinder diesel for example.

I'm inclined to go with Indian Red for this one, just to add some variety to my fleet, so the question is, what rattle can paint to choose?
Any offers as to what is the closest match to the FR colour? I've been looking around but can't find anything definitive ( I'm aware of colour mix variations, fading, etc) and the term Indian Red means everything and nothing without something to match it to.

BTW, the build is progressing slowly. I'm just starting to sort out the motion parts to get that all running smoothly before I get down to adding the details.

[Lonsdaler]

How about LMS Crimson Lake? Phoenix do their paints in aerosol form now.
For an example, it's the red that Accucraft use on Ragleth.

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[GTB]

OK, I'm back to the question I seem to ask every time I build a loco...paint colour!

Any offers as to what is the closest match to the FR colour? I've been looking around but can't find anything definitive ( I'm aware of colour mix variations, fading, etc) and the term Indian Red means everything and nothing without something to match it to.

Indian red was a natural iron oxide pigment, dug out of the ground in India, hence the name. It was largely ferric oxide, but the colour would have varied a bit depending on which hole it was dug from. These days it is a synthetic iron oxide so doesn't vary as much. Other iron oxide pigments are Venetian red which is also a light shade and Tuscan red, which is darker. (Except in NSW where the railways got the names confused when choosing diesel colours in the fifties.)

You are looking for a light red oxide primer colour. For railway examples, Isle of Man locos were some shade of Indian red, as were the frames of GWR locos before Churchward (I think) changed to black.

If you find out what shade of green Manning-Wardle used, I'd be interested in knowing the result.

It's your railway, but there's an issue with Crimson Lake paint on a F&B narrow gauge loco. Crimson Lake (MR/LMS red) was one of the first synthetic organic pigments made from coal tar and it didn't become available cheaply until about the time the F&B Manning-Wardles were at Swindon being converted to horseshoe nails. Up until about 1883, Midland locos were painted green......

Graeme

[philipy]

OK, I'm back to the question I seem to ask every time I build a loco...paint colour!

Any offers as to what is the closest match to the FR colour? I've been looking around but can't find anything definitive ( I'm aware of colour mix variations, fading, etc) and the term Indian Red means everything and nothing without something to match it to.

Indian red was a natural iron oxide pigment, dug out of the ground in India, hence the name. It was largely ferric oxide, but the colour would have varied a bit depending on which hole it was dug from. These days it is a synthetic iron oxide so doesn't vary as much. Other iron oxide pigments are Venetian red which is also a light shade and Tuscan red, which is darker. (Except in NSW where the railways got the names confused when choosing diesel colours in the fifties.)

You are looking for a light red oxide primer colour. For railway examples, Isle of Man locos were some shade of Indian red, as were the frames of GWR locos before Churchward (I think) changed to black.

Thanks Graeme.
There is an interesting article in Wikipedia, including colour swatches of the various named varieties of iron oxide colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_oxide_red#Indian_red.
Unfortunately that doesn't help with knowing which rattle can paint is closest to the the true Indian red.

If you find out what shade of green Manning-Wardle used, I'd be interested in knowing the result.

It's your railway, but there's an issue with Crimson Lake paint on a F&B narrow gauge loco. Crimson Lake (MR/LMS red) was one of the first synthetic organic pigments made from coal tar and it didn't become available cheaply until about the time the F&B Manning-Wardles were at Swindon being converted to horseshoe nails. Up until about 1883, Midland locos were painted green......

Re MW colours, the F & B book that I referred to at the beginning of this just says that there were a limited number of stable colours available at that time and MW chose dark green as their standard (Lined with light green and red), without specifying which green or from where it was derived ( copper based perhaps?).

No, I won't be using Crimson Lake, for sure.
The same book has illustrations of modern, coloured 3d drawings and although the colour they've used on those looks too bright/orange to my mind, I really have nothing to go on and since the author is a major authority on the FR I'd not expect him to have allowed a major deviation from what he perceives to be a realistic representation of the true colour.
In the book there are also reproductions of paintings which include the F & B locos, some modern and some Victorian, but those seem to show a deeper red, but again who knows what they were based on, not to mention the artists colour perception, paint representation, fading and reproduction changes!!!!!
I'd include a scan here but that would simply add at least two more perception errors and make it somewhat pointless.

I believe that the Furness Railway also used an iron oxide red on their loco's, but they are usually shown as being a somewhat browner shade, just to add to the confusion!

I have a supposedly iron oxide red primer but that is definitely too orange and is in part why I asked the question...!

[GTB]

There is an interesting article in Wikipedia, including colour swatches of the various named varieties of iron oxide colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_oxide_red#Indian_red.

Unfortunately that doesn't help with knowing which rattle can paint is closest to the the true Indian red.

Been there, done that and there's a reason why most of my locos are black........ Although that isn't foolproof, as the various black pigments in common use have different undertones that show up in bright sunlight.

I don't know if it happened in the UK, but here in Oz back in the '80s and '90s there was a trend to use 'heritage' colours on everything, especially old buildings.

I have a couple of interesting books on the subject and there are online resources from the USA. One of my books has an illustration of an Aust. colour card from the 1880s, all 16 colours of it. including a reddish brown colour named as Indian Red, which seems to be about the same as BS 381 Deep Indian Red.......

I have an old copy of BS 381c 1964 rescued when our works library was closed down, which is useful. BS 381 only dates back to 1930, but I've read somewhere that at least some of the colours came from Railway practice.

I collected a lot of paint colour cards in the '80s for reference, as every local paint manufacturer and his dog added 'heritage colours' to their colour cards at the time. Most are variations of colours in BS 381c with different names.

Since I use an airbrush for painting, I can mix my own colours to match paint samples, chips and other colour references.

My approach for railway colours is to work out the nearest match on the heritage colour cards and use that, maybe with a bit of tinting. It may well be not 100% correct, but it will look right as the colour range available back then was limited by the available pigments.

If you are restricted to aerosols, then your choice is limited. All you can do is collect colour cards, see what's available and make your choice. The only way you'll get 100% accuracy is to borrow the Tardis, go back to Leeds when MW were painting the F&BR locos and ask the paintshop foreman for a paint sample.

Other peoples opinions are no more than that (including mine), you may get a consensus at best. An old friend that left us many years ago had a definition of an expert. 'X is an unknown quality and a spurt is a drip under pressure'. Artists are often good with colours, but are also known to change them for a 'better' result. Unless the painter was contemporary with the subject and painted it from life, the colour used is just one more opinion.

The only way the Festiniog can accurately know a paint colour from 150 years ago is either they found a dried up paint tin in the recesses of Boston Lodge, or when they pulled an England to pieces to restore it, they found some unweathered paint under a part that had protected it for all those years.


There is of course a way out of all this. In an alternative history the LNWR beat the GWR to it, bought the F&BR and promptly painted the locos in LNWR black. Then you can start a conversation to find out what type of black pigment they used.

Graeme

ps. The colour used on that restored Furness Railway loco in your Wikipedia link is the colour I would call Indian Red, but it is a bit lighter than BS 381c 448 which is called Deep Indian Red.

[Lonsdaler]

Well,
From that Wikipedia article, Crimson Lake seems to be nearer to English Red. I offered it solely as a colour that is available in rattle can form. If you can identify a RAL code for Indian Red, you can get custom aerosols from many paint suppliers, even in single cans.
Have you tried a matt varnish over Halfords Red primer? It might give a suitable shade?

[philipy]

Thank guys.
The problem is that "Indian Red" as such doesn't appear to be codified. I suppose that isn't unexpected given that it is/was based on a natural mineral which must have varied in colour depending where in India it was originally quarried in the early 1800's - just look at the colour variation of Welsh slate from a single quarry! As far as I can find, there isn't a RAL colour identified as such and doing a search for "Indian Red" brings up many rainbows of red shades on countless sites! As a f'rinstance try:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=indian ... 9e7223.jpg

What I was hoping for, from those who know an awful lot more about the Festiniog than me, was something along the lines of, "Well nobody really knows for sure but XXXXX is a pretty good match for what we do know".

In all honesty it isn't that critical really, because in truth nobody even knows whether it should be green or red let alone the original shade of red, even before weathering and fading, but I do like to get as close as I can, if I can.

[philipy]

I've just come across this page from Windsor & Newton. https://uk.winsornewton.com/blogs/artic ... country=GB
As respected artists paint suppliers, I'm inclined to trust them over random commercial paint suppliers. Whether their versions are close to the Festiniog colour is still unknown.
On my laptop screen the colour looks a lot deeper than I have in my minds eye, but who knows?

[GTB]

As respected artists paint suppliers, I'm inclined to trust them over random commercial paint suppliers.

Being a cynic I'm inclined not to. It depends on how much of their corporate memory has survived I guess. I looked them up, they are part of a Swedish multinational these days and have been through more owners than Humbrol.

You are getting perilously close to the event horizon of the colour accuracy rabbit hole. If you fall in you come out the other end as a GWR enthusiast......

Graeme

ps. If you look up the RAL site, they are the German equivalent of the BSI. RAL classic colours are common german colours from the late '20s, same as the BS 381c colours are british colours from the same period.

The nearest thing to indian red in the RAL list would probably be 3009 oxide red. Revell have it in their enamel list as #37 reddish brown. I use it as VR wagon red, but it's bit lighter than indian red, closer to gulf red I think.