What color is SP Dark Olive and how do I get it?

Floquil Days are Here to Stay?  NOPE!

This has long been a problem for me... What is the right color for SP's huge numbers of heavyweight cars before 1954's Two-Tone Gray "Standardization" of heavyweight cars?

About 1995, I was using Floquil's Pullman Green on everything I was painting.  I guess back in the day of incandescent interior lighting the bluish hues looked ok when warmed up with more yellows.
but still.

Taken outside in sunlight.  Bottom Floquil Pullman Green, Top StarBrand SP Dark Olive Green.  (SP did pioneer the Double Stack!)

When I started running my passenger cars at the club layout in about 1998 or so, there was a HUGE problem.  My cars were a sickly lighter shade, missing all of the warm brown and darker green hues that the custom painted cars the club was using had.  Those cars were all properly researched and one of the custom painters in Southern California had made a special mix of paint just for the cars.

Heavily weathered SP 6490... can you still tell the brown's gone out of it?

On the cars that I could, I weathered to hide the effects of this major color mismatch.

I darkened the 6190's paint some with weathering, but didn't repaint it yet.

The headend cars I was able to do this to as they didn't see the wash-rack very often while they're in the Annex getting unloaded and reloaded, while the other passenger cars were being washed and serviced.

Wait - Not everything should be Pullman Green either!

The Pullman Standard Company was put out of the Pullman Pool operating business on Dec 31, 1948 as a ruling of the Anti-Trust lawsuit that was filed on behalf of Budd and AC&F who were also building sleeping cars that Pullman Standard was getting revenue from operating for the US railroads!

Pullman Green (Walthers) on a STD 12-1 sleeper.

SP specified a different color than Pullman did for their cars (Head-end cars, Diners, Coaches, Chair cars, etc).  Pullman Green actually tended to be darker with a little less warm brown look to it, compared to the SP's Dark Olive Green (DOG).  So, after January 1, 1949, SP painted all their sleeping cars in SP Dark Olive Green, not Pullman Green.

I tried custom mixing some colors, but never really found a color that I was happy with.

So in about 2012 I learned that StarBrand and Tru-Color were making more accurate colors for SP Dark Olive.

On one of my visits to Scott Inman's house in Sacramento one day, he had some of the TruColor Dark Olive paint.  I'd just picked up a bottle of the StarBrand's Dark Olive as well, so we painted two of my Walthers Pullman 12-1s that I had prepped for painting as an experiment.  Both cars came out very nice, and I decalled them for Southern Pacific service after 1948.

SP 6047, Painted with StarBrand Dark Olive Green, again - in sunlight.

Both colors looked good and I've settled on StarBrand paint for all the SP passenger cars I work on.  For Pullman Green I mix in extra black, to darken the paint.  I usually do this by feel, and not to an exact standard.  Usually I have another car in the shop that's already been painted my version of Pullman Green so, it's within a few shades of whatever that one was.

This works well because over time these dark colors did fade somewhat and even weathering effects would change how some cars looked that were painted at other Pullman shops.

The Modeler's Paint Shop!

Here we see a before and after.

SP 1051 looks like it's been through a dust storm to hide the lighter Floquil Pullman Green.

Freshly shopped, SP 1050 (my old SP 1051 repainted) with StarBrand Dark Olive Green emerges.

I've been slowly shopping and repainting my "finished" cars that were in Floquil Pullman Green.  Even finding one of my cars that was still in the old Floquil color this week was a challenge.  I did manage to find my old SP 2906 lounge model still in it's old colors so I could do the comparison between it and the SP 5130.



The SP 2906 here has Floquil Pullman Green paint and MicroScale SP Passenger Decals, which should have the "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" name spelled out with more space between each letter.  The 5130 has StarBrand paint and ThinFilm 160 Decals.  While the ThinFilm decals are hard to find... and you need to be sure you're not getting any from the "Bad Batch" of orange ones they had a few years ago, they are by far the better and based on correct artwork.

An example of the condensed "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" sans the "LINES" section at the end just fitting between the doors.

I actually enjoy the fact that some cars I see in photos actually kept the pre-1946 lettering style and did just drop the "LINES" part off the end of the letterboard.  However that was a minority, and usually limited to cars where the new letter spacing wouldn't fit nicely.

In Closing

SP "Los Angeles", a Pullman STD 12-1 sleeper

We've all heard it in the hobby for so long... "If you don't like it, tear it out and do it the way you want it now!"  That seems to go over well with track work, mountains, lakes, scenery, buildings... but how often do we say, "NO, I hate that color that lovely passenger car is... It's got to go!" and then actually do something about it?

I think more often that not we view our rolling stock as something that once it's done, it's done... even if it's not to our current standard, here 20 years since we completed the model.

Jason Hill

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