Large Scale Central

Color of steam loco backheads/boilers

I’m repainting one of my Bachmann 10 wheelers and wondering what color the backhead and that part of the firebox that extends into cab, is painted. Also, I’ve seen cab interiors painted green, but how much to paint? The ceiling? The back wall?

Almost every one I have seen the backhead was black like the boiler. The interior cab walls were often painted green zinc chromide.

Thanks, Vic. Yeah, I Googled the topic after I logged of LSC and looked at lotsa photos of cab interiors. Guess I’ll leave 'er black, but maybe a slightly different shade. Don’t ask me why. Because! (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)BTW, and off this topic, I was checking out my battery installation kit I got from G Scale Graphics, looked at the battery and wondered where the heck I was gonna put it. The I looked at my other loco and realized I stuck the batt under the coal load. Duh!

The boiler, on the outside, is covered with a jacket. That could be Russian iron, plannished iron, or gloss black. But the boiler blackhead is the boiler without a jacket. So it would be just black iron, maybe with a bit of rust and soot,

All of the cab interior (wood or metal) is usually painted the chromate green. At least that is what I have seen on restored locomotives.

Are there any details on the back head like valves, gauges, oil cans? You could paint those to add contrast to the black. I went around all my Bachmann locos and painted the valve handles red and they sure pop.

This one must have been steam cleaned the day before and gobs of cotton waste used to polish her up!

Pretty basic black with red handles. Locos didn’t have cab lights on while running, any contrast helps and the red keeps white from fading to grey…

edit; Yep just noticed the white ones … on the water system …

David Maynard said:

The boiler, on the outside, is covered with a jacket. That could be Russian iron, plannished iron, or gloss black. But the boiler blackhead is the boiler without a jacket. So it would be just black iron, maybe with a bit of rust and soot,

Make sure people realize the boiler jacketing continued along the firebox up to, or is to back to, the backhead.

Forrest, I think that depends on the builder, or re-builder. Sometimes the jacket extends into the cab, to the backhead, and sometimes it doesn’t quite extend that far.

The 10 wheeler I saw on the Texas state railway was like that, the jacket extended back into the cab, But another engine I saw, the heads of the stay bolts were visible in the cab, so no jacket in the cab…