What would be a proper red and/or orange for the color band/stripe on the "Man O' War" passenger equip? I have no photos for reference of color, width nor placement.

-- W. David Godwin (WDGodwin@aol.com), March 23, 1999

Answers

i just need to know where i can buy the paint man o war please email me thanks

-- stella ramsey (honey2647@aol.com), August 29, 2002.

Dear David,

There are two excellent color photographs of the Man-O-War in the June 1975 issue of Trains Magazine (Kalmback Publichations). Also you might check out Ricks Train Saver Page on the internet. Just type in Ricks Train into your search engine and take it from there. Rick has over 6,000 railroad related pics classified alphabetically. Click onto the Ce section and look at the thumb nails. I was shocked to find an outstanding color pic of the Man-O-War, with only Fort Mitchell and Fort Benning in tow, pulling into Columbus, GA. Besides it is a Seaboard GP-7 with a Seaboard Pullman. I guess that this photo was in the mid 50's because that would have been the time that Seaboard abandoned its depot down near the old Field Crest Mill on Front Street and moved passenger operations to Union Depot on 4th Avenue.

About the pin striping. I have some real heart burn about the Walthers RED striping that they have promulgated over the years. The Central chose ORANGE to accent the blue and gray colors. The Microscale decals sets are accurate in that all the striping is Orange. I used orange slot car racing decals to decorate my N scale model of the Man-O-War. If Rivarossi would ever make an HO scale Budd combine, then I might model the Man-O-War in HO. I am not about to try splicing an Athearn Baggage onto a coach to kit-bash Fort Mitchell. I had very good luck modeling the four car consist using Con-Cors corrugated streamline passenger cars. The window arrangement is not quite right on the observation and I had to fill in four windows on the right side where the kitchen was positioned, but it was close enough. I have found that you cant get it exact, but if you can make some reasonable representation then that is all that matters. However, if your the kind of model railroader who can fabricate a Budd coach out of a Budwiser beer can, more power to you. For the rest of us, Ill settle for just getting in the ball park thank you.

Oh, one last detail, Micromark sells silver metal foil to simulate stainless steel. This stuff is easy to work with and if you screw up, you can just take a wad of masking tape to it and start all over again. Also, Testors now makes a buffable chrome paint that is fantastic. You have to work with it and it only works through an airbrush. Once you spray on a very light coat, you buff it with some cotton balls or swabs. Then apply a little more and repeat until you get the right effect.

As for the paint colors for the E-7 engines. I found that Poly-S Royal Blue is very close to Deco Blue and used Poly-S Ghost Gray. It is a bit on the light side, but I like the contrast more than if I used Gull Gray which is darker. Also it looks a bit sun faded and contrast more with the smoke grime from the exhaust.

Hope that this has been helpful for you and any other Central modelers out there who are working on their own Man-O-War consist.

-- John Ross Walker, US Navy (Retired) (jrosswalker@yahoo.com), May 19, 2000.

A picture of the Ft. Benning can be found in a book titled, American Streamliners. The picture is in color. I found the book at Barnes and Noble.

-- Stephen Cargile (gscargile@htnl.com), November 28, 1999.

The "Man o' War" Budd-built equipment was delivered plain stainless steel; I have a slide of the train near Durand circa 1948 with no stripe on the cars. Central of Georgia added the trim around 1951. According to railfans who road and photographed the train, the "hatband" was red (not orange as were the diesel stripes). As to the proper shade, I would guess that Santa Fe Warbonnet red should be a good match. The stripe was slightly narrower than the smooth stainless steel name board at the top of each car. The stripe did not go onto the nameboard, but ran inside the fluting on either side. On the observation car (Ft. Benning), the red came to a point on the bottom edge of the stripe just behind the marker lights.

-- Tom Alderman (Topa12283@aol.com), March 28, 1999.