the Doniphan Branch Railway
Missouri Pacific / St Louis & Iron Mountain Structure Paints

Missouri Pacific Exterior Building Colors: comments by Charlie Duckworth

1910 Colors
The St. Louis Public Library was built around 1900 and still has a good selection of books from the turn of the century. There is a book titled "Correct Color Schemes" published by National Lead Company in 1910 - the commercial paint is Dutch Boy. The purpose of the book was to give home owners an ideas of what colors went together when painting their houses. The book is illustrated with period houses showing the base color with a trim color. I assume the book was developed as a sales reference when home owners came in for advise.

There's a color chart in the back of the book that has 27 paint chips. On the top row center there is a No. 323 Dark Bronze Green that matches the Down's station Black Green color chip (Doug code 7.5G 2/2). Overall base color of Downs station color matches closely to No. 315 Neutral Drab (match to 5Y 8/4 code on the back of the chip). Downs station was built in 1917 so it falls into the Bronze Green and Bright Yellow standard that was adapted in 1910 and remained as a standard until 1926.

Doug Brush has furnished paint chips found on windows of the former Down's roundhouse. The Red on the ends of the ventilation windows comes close to matching No. 322 Venetian Red on the chart. Doug's color is a brighter Red but in the same family – one theory is as the Red faded or aged it took on a brighter hue. As one puts this all together, the 1910 copyright date on the book also corresponds with the Mopac's date of 1910 issuance of colors for stations and right of way buildings. Since paint was mixed on site from dry powder with linseed oil - my theory is the standard 1910 Missouri Pacific colors were obtained by using what was commercially available from the paint industry and are colors in this painting guide for 1910 homes.

1926
With the purchase of the International - Great Northern and Gulf Coast Lines railroads in Texas and Louisiana by the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1926 the `new' Missouri Pacific Lines found itself with several variations of station colors. The old Missouri Pacific had used Yellow with Bronze Green trim since 1910. The Mopac decided to revise their station colors and used a Standards Committee to select the new colors. Several small plaster depots were made and each was painted in the station colors of the old MoPac, the newly acquired I-GN and GCL's colors. The committee decided to adapt the color scheme that the I-GN had been using as the new system standard. These colors were `Colonial Yellow' with Brown trim. Color chips have been found on the Missouri Pacific station at Beloit, Kansas in 1982. The colors were painted over a plaster finish in the freight room and were not affected by the weather or sunlight.

As to matching these colors for modeling purposes the Colonial Yellow was mixed using Floquil Reefer Yellow, Boxcar Red and Roof Brown. I can't provide an exact mix but use only a few drops of the Red and Brown to match the Yellow shade. The Brown trim is a mix of Floquil's Roof Brown with some drops of the Colonial Yellow added to match the Brown.

These colors were used on depots, section houses, tool houses, telephone booths, watchman shanties and privies - any building seen on the Right-of-Way. Terminal or engine facilities structures were painted Red with Bronze Green trim. This is the same Red and Green combination used in 1910. An example of a tool house painted in these colors can be found in the all color St. Louis railroading book by Jim Ozment. This Missouri Pacific Historical Society published a set of painting diagrams for structures in Volume Two of their Maintenance of Way Drawings.
Charlie Duckworth

A note.
For engine and terminal buildings, if it's steel paint it Black and if it's wood paint it Red with the Bronze Green trim. Wooden structures with steel supports would have the steel painted Black. Steel structures that had wooden doors or hatches would have the wooden parts painted Red. When new, wooden water tanks might have the steel bands painted Black but as they were repainted the bands got painted Red to save the expense and time. Same goes for most of these things, as time passed and expenses rose, corners were cut to save money. Elvin Klepzig

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