Heck of a Catalog for Penn Central Fans

When it comes to the PC color debate I honestly can't say one way or the other anymore. I personally lean toward the side that says the PC was so lazy and eager to cut costs they just ignored the official paint specs most of the time and used plain black on repaints. What really sways me to that side are the former employees who did the actual painting that claim they were just using straight black, and were so amused by the technical listing as DGLE / Brunswick Green that they joked there must have been a single gallon of green somewhere in their hundreds of gallons of black. The whole truth will almost certainly never be known, especially with a company as historically disorganized as the PC.

As Ryan said in his message, the most important thing in the end is if the model looks right. If they do keep their word and paint it the same as the heritage unit, that will be enough to satisfy me since I still have a lot of difficulty detecting any green in that paint. The catalog photo was the main alarm here, and we have already been assured that was purposefully overdone.

The PENN CENTRAL has, and always will be, the railroad dearest to my heart.

I grew up in Voorheesville, NY (VO) practically next to the NYC's 2 track main and spent many hours watching trains leaving and heading for Selkirk yards.

I started modeling the PC in the late 60's in HO in the days when my local hobby shop had to order PC decals because they simply didn't keep them in stock. My first ready-to-run loco in PC livery was a Life-Like GP-40 bought in 1971 which I still have.

My 32 year railroad career began with the PENN CENTRAL in 1974 working as a Carman at A.E. Perlman-Selkirk Yards until 2006, so I can say I saw my fair share of of the full range of colors on everything from cabooses to locomotives.

Of interest to this thread is that Selkirk's diesel shop had a "wash rack", and if an older PC paint job was run through it for a wash, and if that paint was done at a former PRR facility, the dark green tint was very obvious while the unit was wet. That tint was also noticeable on sun-faded units..almost a greenish-grey! New ordered units were painted a very glossy black that seemed to last, while units painted black "in house" didn't seem to fair as well.

P.S., I am presently working on producing a virtual fleet of PC equipment for Microsoft's Train Simulator..something sorely lacking in that "sim" community.