# train station colors



## m ledley (Jan 18, 2009)

what color if any were early wooden train stations painted say 1920's & up....thanx mike


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## San Juan (Jan 3, 2008)

Station colors varied a lot between different railroads. 

Since I model the Santa Fe in HO scale I'm pretty familiar with thier wooden stations. Here are some examples of how they were painted:


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

Matt, those Santa Fe stations are beautiful! Nice work! Are they wood or plastic?


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## San Juan (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By Ray Dunakin on 04 Jan 2010 06:24 PM 
Matt, those Santa Fe stations are beautiful! Nice work! Are they wood or plastic? 

Oops. Should have mentioned that those are not models that I built. My fault on that one









But they are laser cut wood buildings by American Model Builders (AMB). 

While beautiful models, the wooden Santa Fe stations made by AMB do not really fit on our Southern California themed Santa Fe layout. But we do have a San Juan Capistrano depot. I'll have to get some photos of that. 



I'm also fairly familiar with the D&RGW narrow gauge station paint schemes. One very unique station, Ignacio, was pink in the final years of the D&RGW narrow gauge. For more information why it was pink and a great color photo see this link:

Pink Ingacio Station


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Depends on the railroad, and sometimes the division. 

These are all B&O 

































These are all Erie 


































If you're freelancing, just pick 2 or 3 good strong contrasting colors you like for your official corporate paint scheme


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## Bob Pero (Jan 13, 2008)

Every railroad had its own color scheme for stations and other buildings. Some on line research should help quite a bit. If you can find the page for a particular railroad's historical and technical society, it can be a major help.


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## Steve Stockham (Jan 2, 2008)

What RR are you looking to model? Also, what region of the country?


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## m ledley (Jan 18, 2009)

i model NYC & Pennsy but the station i built is on the Erie..not to far from were i grew up in Ohio...mike


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## paintjockey (Jan 3, 2008)

The NYC station/museum by me is red brick with hunter green trim. It's in Conneaut oHIo. Their freight house on the other side of the tracks is and always was primer grey with dark grey trim. 
Terry


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## m ledley (Jan 18, 2009)

after the suggestions i got here & lotsa research i've settled on hunter green w/gray trim ...mike


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## Steve Stockham (Jan 2, 2008)

Hmmm.......that should be quite attractive!


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By m ledley on 06 Jan 2010 06:59 PM 
after the suggestions i got here & lotsa research i've settled on hunter green w/gray trim ...mike
Post pictures when it's done. We're all suckers for photos of other people's projects!


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

I thought that they painted everything with the company colors. Hmmmmmm


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By John J on 10 Jan 2010 06:29 AM 
I thought that they painted everything with the company colors. Hmmmmmm 
Well, then somebody went through an awful LOT of trouble to paint things weird just for those photographs and postcard sketches, lol...

The ONLY operational reason that I can think of for having different divisions different colors would be so that trainmen would know at a glance when they were mis-switched and 'lost', or otherwise out of their area.


My first guesses are 1. Things were not uniformly standardized sometime until later . 2. The hand colored ones were finished by some guy working from memory, and/or using the inks he had on his desk. 3. "Preservationists" picked different eras to preserve for themselves, or painted then with whatever colors they got donated (which doesn't quite explain why 3 match each other here, 5 match each other near my mom's, etc. but both schemes are so radically different... except for maybe a localized case of 'monkey see, monkey do').... I'm too lazy to go look it up (or maybe busy with my own projects), but both the B&O and E-L have hysterical societies, and museums, if it bothers you that much. lol


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