Caboose Color for WP668

John is done welding the new caboose landing and place-to-anchor
the new stairs and he has the wood for WP668’s new landing mostly cut,
primed, and drilled for bolts. We have been discussing what color
to paint the caboose. The first color John tried on the new wood was on the orange-ish
end of brown and would have made WP668 look like a huge shoebox-shaped tomato. Ick.

The official color name is “Mineral Brown” but we can see from the peeling paint on WP668
herself that she has worn a wide range of red brown tints with yellow trim over the last
91 years. WP668 was one of the rail cars photographed for the book Western Pacific
Color Guide to
Freight and Passenger Equipment by Jim Eager (Publisher: Morning Sun Books;
ISBN-10: 158248063X, ISBN-13: 978-1582480633), so we looked in there to see what colors
were actually used on in-service equipment. The book shows that during 1903 – 1983, the
Western Pacific Railroad
had many color combinations: Mineral Brown with
Yellow trim, Mineral Brown with White trim, Silver with Orange trim, Gray-Blue with
White trim, Yellow with Black trim, and Red with White trim.

Almost exactly a year ago, we moved the caboose wheels into our backyard
(see
5 August 2006 blog entry) and bought a brass HO scale model of a steel strapped bay window
WP caboose at The Train Shop (1829 Pruneridge, Santa Clara, CA). Yesterday, John took
that HO model down to the paint store and asked them to match the color in Acrylic paint.
John tried the new color out on WP668 herself just now and it looks perfect.
Here is the model caboose on the actual wheel truck of WP668:

Image Copyright 2006 by Katy Dickinson