MTH's French RPO, and the perception of color

I finally located a Kodachrome transparency that I was sure was in my collection, and a friend scanned it.   This was taken in late August 1964, precisely where I'm not sure, but I was in Languedoc at that time so it is more than likely to be Bezier or Narbonne. 

The train was stopped in a station that was partly over a bridge, so the whole image has been cropped once, just to give an indication of location, and then again to focus on the car itself.

BTW, I want MTH to make one of those classic French electrics, like a BB9200 class or a BB25200 class.   I live in hope!

Ed

That's a nice photo, siesta, very atmospheric;  thanks for finding it and having it scanned.

If you look at the slide, perhaps with an projector, what color do you think is on:

  a) the roof of the clerestory ?

  b) the side of the clerestory

  c) the curved portion of the roof [ between the c'story and side ] ?

And, if you are enlarging the slide:  Is that a roadsign above he lefthand VW ?  Maybe it would help ID the location.

With best rgds, SZ

Hello SZ,

Thanks for the nice comments.  I don’t have a projector; whenever my family needed one it was borrowed from someone with more disposable income than we had!

As for the scan we had problems on Tuesday; it scanned well but there’s something preventing me opening it in most of the usual programmes one would use, but that’s up for investigation after Christmas.  

But the image to which I have limited access to is 5184 x 3360 pixels, and that may be as good as I can get.   To answer your questions, I think that,

a,         the clerestory roof is either black or dark grey.    When the photo was taken some steam still survived on the SNCF, so I would assume all carriage tops ended up being of a similar hue.

b,         the side appears to be black, or black that has weathered to dark grey, and

c,         the curved portion looks to be the same colour as the body, the variation in shade and tone probably attributable to weathering, cleaning - or the lack of it, the type of material used to cover the roof panels, if any, etc.

We made an attempt at reading the sign to which you refer, but it is illegible, and gets worse the more it is enlarged.   Although it has an arrow at the bottom, I wondered whether it was an official directional sign, as I’ve not seen one written in such a manner before.   I was wondering if a search on Google earth may provided some results, but that is a task for another time.

Oh, and the car to which you referred, like the one on the right hand side, is a Renault 4CV.    

I’m just pleased that the bridge parapet/replacement railings were some sort of mesh; otherwise it would have been a wasted slide.   Photography was considerably more expensive in those pre-digital days!!

Regards,

Ed

Ed:

   Thank you for the additional thoughts on the vehicle colors.  My own thoughts are that the roof was originally either all over "brown" or -- more likely in my opinion -- brown for the vertical surfaces and the portion of the roof between them, and black for the top strip [ since in that era SNCF painted psgr car roofs black ].

  No wonder those VW's didn't look "right" somehow !  I had forgotten that the 4CV was perhaps the one exception to "The French copy no one,....".

  Now, as to "Where is it ?"  It seemed to me that it was neither Narbonne or Beziers, because of the greater width of the track layout at those stations.  Going east to Sete was out, the roadway would be below sea level, and the line south to the border was not yet electified in '64.  So a look on the Google maps at the next major station going west and we have I think a winner: 

     Carcassonne.  You were standing on the south side of the tracks to the east of the station;  the canal is on your left.  Track/platform layout and tall power line tower all match.

With best regards, SZ

I said above that I had my doubts about the French postal cars ever having had an overall grey roof [ in the SNCF era ], based on the photo evidence I had.  I was wrong.  I was looking at the rolling stock in an overall station view that I took in 1964, a portion of which I have enlarged;  clearly here are a pair of postal storage cars with overall grey roofs -- so for the steam era that certainly looks proper.

Best, SZ