Floquil Railroad Colors Lacquer and Enamel Paint Survey

My local hobby shop is closing its doors and I bought their entire remaining stock of jars, so they threw in the rack and a chart. While arranging the chips in order of their product numbers I noticed several colors that must have been discontinued as they do not appear on the rack or chart. Amtrak Blue comes to mind along with at least two yellows. While many of our favorites were already gone, some of the stock is at least as old as our favorite miniatures.

Maybe a few colors could be crossed off the list if it could be known exactly what was available circa 1975/76.
 
Thanks for doing this, if you can spray equivalents of the main vintage floquil against other known brands like model master, Vallejo etc that would be fantastic,
 
-... . .- --.. can you spray the equivalents of Floquil's Rust, SP Daylight Orange and UP Armour Yellow? Either Testors or Vallejo or anything else.
 
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Vacformedhero said:
Thanks for doing this, if you can spray equivalents of the main vintage floquil against other known brands like model master, Vallejo etc that would be fantastic,
Click to expand...
I'd be prepared to buy what ever colours we consider close to these vintage colours and ship them to you ,for you to compare(you can keep them obviously)
or purchase a test card of vintage floquil from you (but considering how little of it you have that may not help you)
alternatives ? Can we print a test card of yours, if you can match even one colour of Vallejo or Tamiya to any of the vintage colours then we could calibrate locally until that colour matched.......really appreciate anything you can do as we don't even have modern floquil, or testers here
i have access to Vallejo. Tamiya, model master .....
let us know what help you need to help us :)
 
I'd like to post this because this may help you find the correct colors. This is a history of the Tamiya enamel. Pactra had been cooperating with Tamiya from around 1970's to 1984.
The Tamiya enamel paints that we can buy used be called Pactra Tamiya enamel. Here is a picture:
pactra.jpg
The tie-up was terminated in 1984, but Tamiya kept selling the enamel. What they did was to change the ingredients. Because Japan is so humid that it's hard to dry enamel paints. Basically, the Pactra Tamiya enamel and Tamiya enamel are the same hue except for the metallic colors(from what I heard). What I mean is if the Haze gray came from Pactra Tamiya, it's pretty reasonable. The Haze gray was released in 1984, but I think its possible.
 
kh39 said:
I'd like to post this because this may help you find the correct colors. This is a history of the Tamiya enamel. Pactra had been cooperating with Tamiya from around 1970's to 1984.
The Tamiya enamel paints that we can buy used be called Pactra Tamiya enamel. Here is a picture:
View attachment 543067
The tie-up was terminated in 1984, but Tamiya kept selling the enamel. What they did was to change the ingredients. Because Japan is so humid that it's hard to dry enamel paints. Basically, the Pactra Tamiya enamel and Tamiya enamel are the same hue except for the metallic colors(from what I heard). What I mean is if the Haze gray came from Pactra Tamiya, it's pretty reasonable. The Haze gray was released in 1984, but I think its possible.
Click to expand...

Kaoru, that's very interesting. I had no idea there was this relationship between the two companies. Do you think the current Tamiya Enamel line is the same in terms of color as the 80s PactraTamiya line?
 
Creos colors(Gunze Mr color) had a relationship with Revell colors like Pactra Tamiya untill around 1980. Then the hues changed a lot, but as for Tamiya enamel, there weren't big changes like Creos. I googled if there were changes and found some people say that Pactra Tamiya used be a bit more vivid. I would often used Pactra Tamiya for weathering, but there weren't big changes like Creos.
 
Does anyone know the Floquil Green used on Red 3? Matching to the reference photos and the decals in the kit I chose Vallejo Air Pale Green for my 1/72nd scale FM build, but I'd love to know which Floquil color was used originally. There are several greens in the Floquil line and I thought it was Pullman Green. I just sprayed a test of the Pullman Green and it's way too dark. Like other Floquil colors, it could have changed over the years, but this is pretty extreme.

Here's a shot showing the green on my FM X-Wing on either side of the droid strip. The green has been oversprayed with the base color to knock it down. The nose stripe is the kit decal with some base color overspray.

Stay on Target-21.jpg

BTW, if the information is already available somewhere on the RPF, I couldn't find it after searching for a while. There are a LOT of X-Wing threads!
 
I'm actually working on a vintage Floquil palette for the Blue Leader/Red 2 hero X-Wing, and have been poring over lots of reference pics of all of the hero models, including Red 3 as a way to compare and contrast the colors and weathering techniques used on each.

I have some ideas, but let me go back through my notes and color collection and I can at least let you know what my current opinion is on that Red 3 green.
 
Thanks, -... . .- --..

Can I call you Beaz, or have I got my Morse Code wrong?

I've attached a jpg of my Caboose Red and Pullman Green test cards. I'm curious to see if, after all the discussions about scanning and color correction, you're able to get them to look anything like your tests. Let me know if you need the full tiff file and I'll get it to you.

The Pullman Green is really dark, but the Caboose Red looks just like I hoped. As I was spraying the color I thought, "That's it! That's X-Wing Red!"

Caboose Pullman 001.jpg
 
I don't have any Floquil green, but my opinion regarding Red 3 is F110256 CN Green #12 and the base color was oversprayed on the green.
 
stonky said:
Thanks for posting! Here's what I get after correction:

View attachment 559755
Click to expand...

Thanks for doing that, Stonky! Looking at your correction on my calibrated monitor your version appears too bright and a little washed out. The red is light and missing a good bit of brown, and the green is a little light and missing a lot of gray.

Interestingly, when I print your image on normal paper on my non-calibrated color laser printer, the tones are a pretty good match and you wouldn't go far wrong taking the printout to your hobby store to try and find a good color match. A good hobby store should have the Vallejo chip chart which is made using actual paint samples, which is great.

And when I print your image on my calibrated Epson photo printer using photo paper, I come out with samples that are too brown in the red, and too dark and gray in the green! :wacko

Just goes to show there are too many variables throwing this stuff back and forth via the Internet after passing it through various devices and pieces of software. Sigh...

Perhaps it's time to recalibrate... I don't know...
 
VFX Freak said:
Thanks for doing that, Stonky! Looking at your correction on my calibrated monitor your version appears too bright and a little washed out. The red is light and missing a good bit of brown, and the green is a little light and missing a lot of gray.

Interestingly, when I print your image on normal paper on my non-calibrated color laser printer, the tones are a pretty good match and you wouldn't go far wrong taking the printout to your hobby store to try and find a good color match. A good hobby store should have the Vallejo chip chart which is made using actual paint samples, which is great.

And when I print your image on my calibrated Epson photo printer using photo paper, I come out with samples that are too brown in the red, and too dark and gray in the green! :wacko

Just goes to show there are too many variables throwing this stuff back and forth via the Internet after passing it through various devices and pieces of software. Sigh...

Perhaps it's time to recalibrate... I don't know...
Click to expand...
that was why I wanted to ship colours at my cost to ..'..----/;:...., he does not have enough vintage floquil to print everyone a sample ( I would pay for one)

at least if we try guessing and ship a colour if it's a match we can have an equivalent colour from a current range .
 
Mailing each other paint chips would definitely be the best way to ensure we're all talking about the same thing, and I'd be happy to help. I have a lot of the original paints, but few of mine are from the 70's. I did finally find an intact bottle of the Reefer Gray from the early 70's and it is a LOT lighter than the same paint from later years.

I'm going to try Depot Olive for the Red-3 green and see how that looks, the CN Green is on its way.

I'm also upgrading my scanner software to Silverfast and recalibrating it, so I'll give that method one more chance.

I'll let you all know what I find out.

BTW, -... . .- --..'s method of thinning the Floquil enamels with Mr. Levelling thinner works really well. I used 25% thinner and two drops of Floquil retarder for about 40 drops of paint and it sprayed beautifully smooth at 15psi without drying in the airbrush at all. Thanks for that tip, -... . .- --.. (seriously, can we call you Beaz?) :)
 
Happy to help! That Mr. Leveling Thinner is magic stuff. Works great with all the Tamiya paints as well.

My friends call me Kevin. "Beaz" works fine too!

More to come...
 
Yeah, if you're looking to make a direct comparison to teh monitor then it calls into question a bunch of other factors: calibration, colorspace, monitor quality, etc. That said, the swatches above as well as the chart look pretty good on my end, on multiple calibrated displays in multiple environments.

I guess the best thing to do would be to generate a match to something that we can all get our hands on, by matching an original swatch to a Pantone color or to a paint mix.

That said, the two colors above look close to Pantone 492C and 418C on my end, but, again, I'm making my comparison to the color corrected image above and not an in-hand paint sample.
 
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