Tell me about trains with colored trucks...?

Found a few examples of painted freight trucks in the wild:

So, other than black trucks do appear in real life.  The above examples include red oxide and red paint...

Hope this helps! 

Mitch 

But a lot of what you see in our toy train world of O gauge are fantasy schemes anyway — like my MTH Milwaukee Road ore car painted in an orange and maroon Hiawatha scheme with maroon trucks. The vast majority of trucks in the real world are simply black.

Jim R. posted:

But a lot of what you see in our toy train world of O gauge are fantasy schemes anyway — like my MTH Milwaukee Road ore car painted in an orange and maroon Hiawatha scheme with maroon trucks.

And gi-raffe unit trains.  

The vast majority of trucks in the real world are simply black.

Yup.  But "your line, your rules" certainly applies. 

Mitch 

The Truck frames were painted by real freight car builders during the 1950's and the 1960's.

The time frame for real freight cars is between 1947-1970. 

The railroad operators had caboose truck frames painted often to match the body.

That is the past.

Now the truck frames are often black and the new roller bearing caps are colors like blue and orange. 

Andrew

Another purpose was to make it easier to see cracked sideframes.

There were a few examples in 1980.

On Pillsbury cylindrical 4-bay covered hoppers built by Marine Industries the truck frames were painted blue to match the body.

On SCOULAR cylindrical 4-bay covered hoppers built by Marine Industries the truck frames were painted bright yellow to match the body.

Andrew

UP CHALLENGER express boxes with red trucks.

For most of the history of railroading trucks were painted carbody color.  Freight cars I purchased in the 1980s had truck castings that had been dipped in a black asphalt like material by the foundry. We left those trucks black.  During the interurban era, the Baldwin electric railway truck catalog stated that trucks would be painted medium olive green unless otherwise specified. Many interurban railroads left their cars with the olive green trucks and this became their standard color. I assume this color was chosen because lead and chrome pigments used to make this color are very durable.   The California Zephyr was turned and cleaned in Oakland. The trucks were painted with aluminum paint every trip. This made the train look really sharp.  There was normally an effort to keep paint off the wheels.  The wheels could get quite hot during braking and the paint would just add to the smoke associated with with heavy braking.

I called on Amtrak as an account through the 1990s- 2010.  The maintenance people I dealt with told me that certain critical cast components- wheels, truck frames, couplers, etc. were left unpainted for the reason above- to allow for safety inspection.  The casting would show a crack or break much more readily.  The same is true for highway vehicle  frames and fifth wheel applications.

The alloys used for critical components are of the highest quality and the oily and greasy environment would protect the iron and steel to some degree. So I remember those components being mostly black, and not particularly rusty unless/until they are taken out of service and allowed to be in the elements for an extended time, like in an outside museum.

I think my efforts at weathering have been overly done in "rust".

Colors on truck frames was common practice.  Silver on passenger cars in some cases and the car color on freight cars.  The reality is that with road dirt and grease the trucks would turn black or dark brown without frequent cleaning.  Black became popular as a way to hide that, but even in modern practice it has been tried.  Amtrak Phase IV superliners had silver trucks when delivered.  Now Amtrak uses a dark gray color as their standard truck and underbody color. 

As an aside, the PRR used to freshly paint the frames of the remaining P5s running in the late 50's and early 60's black before inspections as it hid the cracks in the frames.  During the 30's and 40's PRR's standard passenger car truck color was an off color olive-green, but that too gave way to black after the war. 

@GG1 4877 posted:

As an aside, the PRR used to freshly paint the frames of the remaining P5s running in the late 50's and early 60's black before inspections as it hid the cracks in the frames. 

Wonder if that would work for zinc pest? 

Asking for a friend. 

Mitch

UNION PACIFIC center beam flat cars built by Thrall Car in 1977 had the truck frames painted yellow to match the cars.

Andrew

Seems like this discussion should be in the "real trains" category...?

Mark in Oregon

Former Member posted:

How common was this practice on real trains? I'm used to looking at black model train trucks.

I realize this is an older post from a former member... but to help current forumites who are trying to model a specific era.

In 1937 UP streamliners (like the City of Los Angeles) had a paint scheme of Amour Yellow, Leaf Brown with Gold lettering.  The trucks were Leaf Brown.

At the end of 1941 the UP streamliners changed to Armour Yellow, Harbor Mist Gray with bright red lettering and stripes. The trucks were Harbor Mist Gray.

Then in 1955 the Union Pacific changed all their streamliner passenger car trucks to Bright Aluminum.

So, in less than 20 years the same exact Union Pacific passenger car (if built in 1937) would have had 3 different colors on its trucks.