Contacting Bachmann

Is it really necessary to do this ? Bachmann haven't had a problem with getting the blue correct or the bogies right on previous models have they ?

Graham Plowman

If you are referring to the same coach seen under "various different conditions", you have your answer: it's the lighting, film (or camera) rendition of colour, and colour printing. Just what is the "correct" colour? If "rail blue" has a Pantone definition, then that's it, but be advised that even a Pantone definition doesn't guarantee perfect paint matches. Different brands of paint will look different under different lighting, even when they match perfectly under standard lighting conditions. The human eye is a bad guide for determining colour matches anyhow -- that's why car repair shops use expensive colorimeters connected to sophisticated computer programs to get a colour match when you ask them to disguise those nasty scratches... :-)

I used to work for a printing ink supplier- if ever a customer wanted a special mix supplying, we would get them to send samples of the substrate (paper/board/whatever) to our labs along with the colour they wanted matching. I remember great problems with a customer who wanted a single ink to cover everything from headed notepaper to waterproof packaging- we did as he requested, but he then kept complaining that the ink was a different colour on every job. I would certainly be wary of judging colour from photos- I've seen photos of the same thing, taken on the same day from different angles, which appear to be completely different colours. Brian

At West Croydon tonight I noticed two refurbished 455s in Southern livery (so they must have been painted fairly recently in their lives) coupled together, and the shade of green on the adjacent end cars was quite noticably different between them.