I recently picked up a nice K-Line F7 ABA set - and now am shopping for some passenger cars.
Really like the LIONEL 6-1914X cars - but only can see pictures on the computer.
Any notable variances - or stuff that doesnt match?
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I just gave away a set of the K-line F7 ABBA with 7 lionel C&O aluminum from the late 90's and they looked good on the layout.
Chances are there will be a difference in color unless they're K-Line cars. Whether the difference is acceptable is a matter of personal taste. Some people have a low sense of color awareness, and variations don't bother them.
However, the trouble with being "close" in color is that the difference is often irritating, and once you notice it, it's all you see. As interior designers know, (for example, in matching furniture, woods that are close in color but not a match look awful together, but furniture with woods that are very different, like a lighter wood and a mahogany, can be acceptable together), if the colors aren't the same, often the more different the colors are, the better. Pennsylvania green engines with Pennsylvania tuscan passenger cars are fine together, but if you put those tuscan cars with tuscan engines that were a different shade of tuscan than that of the cars, it would look awful.
Buying passenger engines by themselves, and then trying to buy cars to go with them later, is often problematic. Sometimes the colors of different manufacturers will match, but it doen't happen very often.
The real things varied, also, with age and service and "production variation" - plus dirtiness. Even when passenger service was a relative Big Deal, these things lived in the real world and were not always "brochure-ready".
When paint dies were not stable in the past, there could be color variations from pail to pail of the same color from the same plant.
But I do have the 2245 TX SP and a Williams 6 car 15" AL. Considering a 60 year difference, it makes a nice not for sale set.
D500 posted:The real things varied, also, with age and service and "production variation" - plus dirtiness. Even when passenger service was a relative Big Deal, these things lived in the real world and were not always "brochure-ready".
These models won't be weathered, though, and it would be bizarre to see a freshly painted set of engines, all of them the exact same color, mated to a complete set of freshly painted cars, all of them the exact same color, where the engines and the cars were different shades of the livery colors. There's no doubt that this never happened.
Also, if you're modeling a crack passenger train in its heyday, and looking at my picturebooks of passenger trains, the colors of the engines and the cars are matched closely, if not exactly so.
