baltimore & ohio colors

[sorcerer54]

i recently purchased a b&o (dcc equipped) bachman engine from m.d. klein in maryland to go with some Riverossi passenger cars.  here's my dilemma.  the engine and the cars are two different shades of blue.  while i like the riverossi shade, i'm going to stay with the bachman version.  can anyone tell me what the color is to ease my trying to match.  thanks.

[Santa Fe buff]

Perfect question for my B&O week,

I always thought it was a naval blue with a regular yellow.

[Atlantic Central]

Santa Fe buff,

The color is called "B&O Royal Blue". Scalecoat, Floquil and Badger Modelflex all sell it and are all reasonably close matches to the real color.

The Yellow on the scheme you posted is C&O yellow and these paint companies all make that color as well. The yellow only became part of the B&O paint schemes after the 1964 merger/takeover by the C&O.

sorcerer54,

Keep this in mind about color matching, in real life blue is not a very durable color. It fades fast with sun and rain exposure, so it quickly faded to a lighter color and few pieces of equipment would have ever really matched each other for very long.

Sheldon

[Santa Fe buff]

Santa Fe buff,

The color is called "B&O Royal Blue". Scalecoat, Floquil and Badger Modelflex all sell it and are all reasonably close matches to the real color.

The Yellow on the scheme you posted is C&O yellow and these paint companies all make that color as well. The yellow only became part of the B&O paint schemes after the 1964 merger/takeover by the C&O.

sorcerer54,

Keep this in mind about color matching, in real life blue is not a very durable color. It fades fast with sun and rain exposure, so it quickly faded to a lighter color and few pieces of equipment would have ever really matched each other for very long.

Sheldon

Ah, their own color. Thanks for the info.

[ebtnut]

The B&O "crazies"  often refer to this as "BANDO Blue" (as in B and O Blue).  The color did tend to fade over time.  I've seen some old Geeps that were almost Baby Blue due to fading.  The original Rivarossi passenger cars had a blue that was definitly too light.  Recent passenger car options I've seen are much closer. 

[skipgear]

The blue on the RR passenger cars has never been close. I deal with them in N scale and the biggest mistake, other than the baby blue is that they also should have black roofs instead of the gray.

This is the closest I have come using some custom mixed colors:


In HO the Bachmann heavyweights or the various Walthers cars are the best representation of the colors.

[Woody Elmore]

BANDO blue? Okay... I thought it was BEANO blue!