correct railroad colors for screen/decals

There's always going to be some variation when a color is viewed on different monitors, but yes you can get pretty close on your computer if you work from scans of accurate color chips. Still I think you always tend to fall back on what "looks right" to you. Wikipedia has the RGB values for Pennsylvania RR Tuscan Red as 124/48/48. I punched those into my paint program (Paint Shop Pro v7) and the color came out looking too "cold" to me compared to photos of PRR passenger cars which all seemed to be a deeper, warmer red. The shade Floquil had for Milwaukee Road Orange on their website was totally out to lunch, I didn't even bother to check the RGB values. I would try any listed RGB/CMYK/hex values first and see what they look like to your eye, and then tweak the values to get what looks right to you. It may not look right to somebody else, but they're your trains.     

Bear in mind that the colors as they appear on the screen may not exactly duplicate the colors put out by your printer, either.

Rusty

You can cross reference colors if you can find the original railroad colors. But this process really only works when printing decals or art prints. Trying to get exact colors to show on a computer screen is impossible to get 100%. Every screen will display different according to brand, age, settings even location. I do artwork for decals and I have to match colors. Many times on my screen the color 'looks' wrong....but I am using a PMS color match so it will print correct but does not always 'look' correct. If you are looking for a look....just use what looks good to you. 

Thank you for the information.

I didn't write my post very clearly. I almost added something about how I know the color is going to vary from screen to screen and then as it prints out, but it was late.

Having the colors look pretty close on screen is nice when you are looking at color schemes, but in the ballpark is fine. I am more concerned about how the colors would look printed out as a decal, as that is more important to match actual paints.

Any ideas for sources for color chips or RGB values? Jerry suggested wikipedia, so I'll try there. Thanks.

I've been playing around with some color decals on white decal paper (although I've only printed test runs thus far), but I've scanned the actual piece I want to decal and then taken the color values from that.

I've scanned items I've painted, and then opened the scanned images in Photoshop. One of the tools allows you to get a color "read out" of each section of the image.

If you are trying to paint a loco to match a set of passenger cars, for example, this might work better than using a "stock" set of color numbers. 

I'm still experimenting.

Prototype paint info is often available from historical organizations like the C&O etc. They have info on what colors were used and then you can often find a PMS or code. Then they should print close but different home printers may differ shades....like said....experimentation!

Look at www.railfonts.com. 

Check out the Pantone color match system and try to locate a CMYK value for the particular color in mind. Those values should stay constant at the printer. Monitors are notorious for showing erroneous shades. And, keep in mind, the color that appears on the prototype outside - in daylight - WILL be different on a model in the layout room.

Thanks for the additional info.

I found another web site, art-paints.com, with RGB and CMYK info on Floquil RR paints. I don't know the accuracy of the information. There is RGB info on one of the reference documents on the railfonts site, and the values are quite a bit different from the art-paints site.

Are there any free sites with the Pantone color information?

Like you suggested, I guess you just get close, and then you have to experiment.