Nostalgia & History > Western Pacific Diesel Colors

How many different color schemes did WP have ?

One thing I am not clear about is the green(s)?

MacLeod Green
Perlman Green

Were these different colors ? Any examples?
Were there different color orange stripes or was that due to fade ?

How many versions of orange / silver did they have ? I have seen freight units with black? and silver lettering and then the passenger scheme and maybe units with black numbers on the cab with silver lettering on the hood.

Thanks for any help in straightening out the confusion

I just took a quick look at some pictures in my files and found that although some basic paint schemes dominated, the details varied widely. It would be an extensive post to show them all, but might be fun.

Found these variations in just a quick look at just the 600 series switchers ... I'll add a couple more in a following post

don't have any other info as these are in my mFiles

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two more ....

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Yeah, WP did have many variations in their diesel paint schemes.

Depending on how you define it, they used 4 basic paint schemes on their road units (aside from some experimental / special schemes) and most have multiple variations. On their switchers, there were also 4 basic schemes.


Road Units:

1 - Woodfield Green with Yellow Stripe and orange pin stripes (FT units only)
2 - "Pumpkin I" solid orange paint (FT units only, although one GP35 did receive solid orange in the late 1960s)
3 - Zephyr orange and silver, which came in several varieties (passenger, F-unit freight, large roadname, small roadname, etc.) and used on all road units through earliest GP40s and U30Bs
4 - "Perlman" or "MacLeod" green and orange, which also came in variations of nose treatment, plus the "New Image" version with solid orange nose and rear hood
note on the green: there were several shades used, depending on paint supplier and variability in pigment mix. Many have noted that the "New Image" green is noticeably different than earlier greens.


Switchers:

1 - Black and imitation aluminum (white), with variations depending on locomotive model
2 - Zephyr orange and silver, used on all switchers except SW1500s and NW2us, variations in roadname, striping, etc.
3 - "Pumpkin II" solid orange (not all units received this) see WP 602 and 604 above
4 - Green and orange, with a single unit (WP 605 as shown above) receiving the "New Image" variant and with variations in roadname


Special schemes:

Silver body and orange nose - experimental on some FT units
Black with white lettering and orange striping - some 44 ton units on Sacramento Northern and Tidewater Southern
Bicentennial - on two GP40s
Union Pacific yellow and grey - used on two Tidewater Southern RS1s that were ex-UP, Spokane International (they were just relettered for a couple years) and applied to a GP40 following the merger


And here are some photos:

1 - WP 701 in San Jose, showing a rare Zephyr variant with large roadnumber in place of logo on cab side and scotchlite stripe on frame sill. Jim Bruce photo.
2 - SN 712 in Portola, showing earliest green and orange scheme with nose striping. Mike Mucklin photo.
3 - A Vanishing Vistas postcard of a WP FT set in Elko showing the early Woodfield green and yellow paint scheme. Richard Kindig photo. sorry so small, it is all I got of this scheme.


Z



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/14 10:48 by zephyrus.

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Thanks for all the help. So basically the greens (Perlman, MacLeod)where supposedly the same ?
Some of the New Image looks black as do the GP40's delivered Summer 1970 as compared to unit 712 shown above.

Kind of confusing to sort it all out but the variety is very interesting !



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/14 10:37 by train1275.

>So basically the greens (Perlman, MacLeod)where supposedly the same ?

Supposedly, yes. However, it must be borne in mind that names given colors are rather meaningless because the same color, tint, hue, etc. of one company's paint scheme's color was called one thing by that company and another by a different one. For example, according to the late George Rust of DuPont's fleet color operations, the green in the WP's FT scheme, the "Woodford green", is precisely the same color as the lighter of the two greens used by the Reading Co on it's F units (he had the company records to prove this). George also said that a particular color might be issued under several different formula numbers and/or formulations.

It's quite commendable to make every attempt at replicating original colors, but one must be careful not to get bogged down in minutiae because human perception of color is subjective, meaning there is no such thing as "perfect pitch" for colors as there is for musical tones. Factors affecting color perception are the context in which the color is viewed (meaning the other colors present in the scene an how much of the scene is dominated by any one of those other colors); the paint manufacturer; the batching of the paint (no two batches are precisely the same); durability of the paint vehicle in ultraviolet light (paint film breakdown - "chalking"); and the ability of the pigments to resist fading (see attached photo of the 712 right after being painted about 27 years ago).

Trying to judge a color from a photograph is problematic if it doesn't have an 18% gray reference card included in the scene because the card is a known standard which can be replicated by whatever process you are using to view the scene, which all the other colors are not. It gets even more complicated and difficult when trying to judge color values on computer monitors and printing with a color printers. There is simply too much variation between all of these without using that gray card.

>Some of the New Image looks black as do the GP40's delivered Summer 1970 as compared to unit 712 shown above.

The 712 was painted with DuPont Centari (green) and Dulux (orange lettering etc) using official WP paint numbers for the colors, but these types of paint are no longer available commercially. And yes, there were different shades and hues of what is called "Perlman Green", which as I recall mostly depended on the manufacturer (and batch).

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I recall some of the earlier Perlman Green painted GP40s were painted with a Latex based paint that weathered really fast and made the units look bluish. Bugged the heck outa me cuz Joseph Strapac's first book was in black and white and the railfan/modeling magazines back then didn't render colors very well on the stock paper they used.

Exactly as 70ACE stated above. I have seen plenty of B&W pics of WP power with color descriptions and can never understand what color was actually being referred to, this thread is helping this poor easterner understand a very interesting fallen flag.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/14 18:04 by train1275.

As it turns out, "latex-based" paints have nothing to do with latex rubber but are water-based acrylic resins (I first looked this up about a year ago). Apparently "latex" was some sort of advertizing hype from the first manufacturer to introduce this type of paint (they were in the SF Bay area). And no, they still aren't quite as durable as things like Imron, even Dulux.