What color is your fire hydrant?

Im on long Island and the hydrant in front of my house is Red with Silver top

Steve

Hi Steve, I used to live in Nassau county and I also remember red with silver top. Did you live in Nassau county or Suffolk?

 

Since I change what trains and location I run them in, I might have more than one fire hydrant. 

 Mine, all red.

Before or after my dog visits?  

 

A red hydrant is the classic color. I have on order a more detailed hydrant that comes in all red. I will probably leave that one in red and just add a silver top to it for when I want to run my Oyster Bay LIRR train. After doing some research on hydrants, it seems that they come in many colors and the color has meaning as to what type of water pressure it has and other factors.

Here in Trenton they use red with a bright yellow top

Mine are lime green

Solid red in the western suburbs of Chicago.

 

Art

Red at MTH house on fire.

Green with flourescent silver top in my neighborhood.

 

The fire hydrants in my county are white. County must have gotten a good deal on white paint. I think though, the white can be more easily seen at night.

My are red on the layout and in the towns around here.  I have seen yellow in Oklahoma.

All Red in Chicago & western towns out to Sandwich, Ill

When I was a kid, I just saw red ones....now I see yellow, silver, and pond scum green ones.  Out front, the one is yellow (and I had to go look)

Here in Philadelphia they are orange for normal pressure and red for high pressure.

Kansas City area has yellow hydrants with a black top. K.C, MO had (and may still have) yellow fire trucks. I was thinking they may have changed back to red, there was talk of it I think, but can't remember how it ended up? Don't get over there too often. I live on the Kansas side (Lenexa) and most all of the surrounding K.C. suburbs have red fire trucks. I believe all the fire hydrants are the same color throughout the area.

Thanks guys for your contributions here. 

 

It seems that many areas don't even have set rules for the color of the hydrant. I saw pictures of a few that are painted red,white and blue. Another had white with black spots to look like a Dalmation dog of all things! So it seems like good old red is the preferred color for modeling whether it is prototypical to an area or not. 

 

So I know I am crazy, but I will have a choice of at least two types of fire hydrants soon depending on my mood and what I will be modeling at the moment.

Mine are painted orange and then slightly weathered. In heavy industrial areas I have put two "crash posts" near the hydrants to prevent trucks,etc from backing in to the hydrants. The hydrants I use are Berkshire Valley.

 

Fortunately, one of my friends who visits frequently is a retired fire marshal and has advised me on colors.

Driving through Jackson, NJ I saw them painting theirs GN Blue with silver top and caps.  My town also has fluorescent poles attached to them so they can be found in the snow and provide better visibility.

 Some towns paint different symbols on the street indicating where the hydrant is when the firemen drive to a site.

 

Be creative.  It's your railroad.

Someone painted all of ours like that (not nearly as well done) about 30 or so years ago. I am guessing the cities all had to agree to this as many, if not all got the paint jobs. They lasted only a few years like that and went back to the standard yellow with black top. Some of those are very well done, ours were much more amateur like.

Like many, mine are red and silver, based on Broome County, NY, where I grew up.

I live in rural Southwest Washington state. The only hydrant on our road is directly in front of our house. It's yellow all over with grey (heavy plastic, secured with steel cables) end caps on the side.

Mostly Red! But I like the Minion idea... my kids would get a kick out that...

 

 

Just one more thing, hydrants here in Florida seem to all be yellow with green covers on the water outlets at least in my area.

 

Just added some chains to my hydrant. On to other projects.

Fire Hydrants are color coded.  Per NFPA 291.

BLUE	1500 GPM or more	Very good flows
GREEN	1000-1499 GPM	Good for residential areas
ORANGE	500-999 GPM	Marginally adequate
RED	Below 500 GPM	Inadequate

I grew up with yellow in Philly, my fav. the layout will have yellow. However I do like this one.

A mutts dream come true!

Now isn't that interesting. In all my years of traveling around the U.S.A. with various steam locomotives having to take on water from thousands and thousands of hydrants, I have never seen any colors besides red and yellow. Rarely did we encounter a hydrant that would supply up to 1000 GPM.

 

I wonder how many cities & towns actually follow those "recommended" color codes?

Although high rise buildings have sprinkler systems they also have some serious pumps on the fire systems and can move some serious amounts of water. Wonder if the green or blue could be for those types of installations.

 

Not sure I have seen green or blue ones either, but I am going to start paying closer attention to the colors of the ones I do see.

Blue in my small town, funny about the code I had forgotten about that unless it is the markers for underground pipeline colors