UP Armour yellow paint

Try a spray can of bright yellow from the hardware store, or from the auto parts store. Used to be good auto parts stores carried a line of "touchup" paints to match most detroit cars. A good store will have a set of paint chips to judge the color. If shopping Walmarts, go by the color of the plastic cap, but expect the paint to look somewhat different when dry. Experiment with couple of coats upon a piece of plastic or upon some junk rolling stock. The exact shade obtained with yellow depends upon the color of the primer used under it, the color of the material (black plastic can be quite troublesome unless primed), and the use of Dullcote over the last coat. Dullcote seems to tone down some of the brighter primary colors into something more plausible for railroad use. I assume you are trying to do some UP passenger cars or a diesel without an airbrush? My finishing schedule goes something like this.

1. Wash the plastic shell to remove finger prints, mold parting compound, traces of paint remover. Hot water and machine detergent (laundry or dishwasher). In fact a trip thru the dishwasher will get a lot of stuff off.
2. Prime. Use light gray under the paler colors like yellow, dark gray under dark colors like navy blue or brunswick green, red under red. The primer is very opaque and keeps the surface flaws from showing thru the paint.
3. Finish coat, one if it covers, two if the primer color shows thru
4. Decal
5. Dullcote to hide the decal film.

The final color of the car only shows after the dull cote step, so even a too-bright color can tone down and become quite acceptable. Also, the light under which the model is viewed can change the perceived color a lot. Fluorescent light is very blue and colors look a bit different under them than they do under daylight or incandescent light. The eye tends to run colors together if they are not too different. I still remember the carefully chosen "accent" color that was indistinguishable from the base color when applied to the stairway woodwork. So as long as your yellow is close to some other UP rolling stock, it will be perceived as identical, especially under layout lighting.

David J. Starr

check out Scale Coat. It has two different UP yellow. One for newer locomotives and one for older generations. It comes in two types of spray cans for either metal use or plastic.