Model Railroading > Paint Colors

I have a question for all you paint guru's out there (and I know there's a lot of them because every time a manufacture comes out with a new car or engine there are a lot of opinions as to if the color is correct). In the failed SPSF merger the Kodachrome paint scheme was the red color Santa Fe War bonnet red or Southern Pacific scarlet red or something else mixed up, and did both the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific use the same paint?

Steve Kelly CSMRRC

I've got my popcorn maker on full. 🙂

Posted from Android

On th e SP, when the  merger was denied by the ICC, we were told we would send them the yellow paint for their blue and yellow engines and they would send us the red, for the scarlet and gray scheme.
This does not exactly answer whether the merger red was SP Scarlet but I guess it was close enough.

I read that because both partners would have an input the red came from SP.

Yes, the SP and ATSF both used the same red and yellow for their SPSF-painted units.
I recall reading it was SP scarlet for the shared red, but not 100%.

 

Take it for what it's worth... but below is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the failed SPSF merger.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe–Southern_Pacific_merger

"The locomotive livery featured the Santa Fe's Yellowbonnet with a red stripe on the locomotive's nose; the remainder of the locomotive body was painted in Southern Pacific's Scarlet Red (from their Bloody Nose scheme) with a black roof and black extending down to the lower part of the locomotive's radiator grills."

~ Mr. MRL
 

And as an SP and ATSF fan I thought it was ugly!!
I was in DC at the time the ICC shot down the merger. A Santa Fe lobbyist friend of mine was stunned!
Which may tell us something.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

The SPSF paint scheme was a compromise from the word go. And I'm guessing that it would have been replaced within three years.