Kentville, we have a Station!

[Paul Charland]

Hi All,

Finished the Kentville Station this morning, the yard is slowly taking shape.













Paul

[fergusontea]

Ummm... Wow?! That's so nice! I continue to be very impressed with your progress. It's amazing what you're doing! Make sure you're making backups of your work!

-mike

[Paul Charland]

Hi Mike,

I back up all the time, also a good reason to post betas on a web server where they are far away from my system if something should go wrong here.

Lost a hard drive once, wasn't a virus or anything, just a screwed up FAT count while shutting down one night that didn't match the one while trying to start up the next morning.

I have to say I've done a couple of American routes that were nice but this one has that 'I used to live around here' factor the other two were missing.

Paul

[stem]

Isn't that the truth? There's nothing like familiarity to bring a project an extra little sparkle.

I can hardlly wait to paint this yellow.

Very nice Paul. It's looking incredible!

[Paul Charland]

Hi Steve,

Was it yellow back then, I have a shot that looks like it also had about three feet of wainscoting, must have been brown then. Neat building, would look great with the rest of the platform covered.

Paul

[stem]

It was only yellow up to 1914:
http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... atione.jpg

After that the more familiar Tuscan appeared although there was considerably more painted detail like yellow trim around the eaves and window frames into the 40's sometime. Even in the 50's and 60's there was still a small amount of yellow trim around the windows and the window frames seemed to be painted a darker red than the building itself.

With the gloss tuscan repaint in the 70's though, all detail was overpainted and the whole building was one solid colour. Not very attractive unfortunately.

I'm not sure what colour you used on the building but wouldn't RGB 81,18, 27 be closer to the photos?

[Paul Charland]

Hi Steve,

The station changed colors over the years and by the early to mid seventies the paint had faded and just wasn't in too good a shape... nothing to be proud of by this point. Not sure when the script Dominion Atlantic Railway was applied but it appears to have held up better then the rest of the paint.

Here are a few shots showing various paint jobs:

Looks brown (75, 67, 54) in this 1954 shot:



This shot is undated but appears to be 1975 compared to other shots, turns out to be a red color (188, 82, 94):



This one's in the shade, makes a big difference, this color is in the purple range at (136, 86, 123):



Think the station was last painted in 1968, that dark maroon color that you specify. The amount of paint peeling off the station would make you wonder if they never primed before painting, by 1975 the paint looked pretty bad between the fading and peeling. My model is for 1973 so I guessed what it might have looked like at that time. I did make a conscience decision to make the paint on the east and north sides in better shape then the south and west sides, if you look at enough pictures the two sides exposed to the public look in a bit better shape for some reason (second coat of paint maybe... never know). I didn't go by the 1973 shots for color as I only have shots taken on dull days.

Paul

[stem]

From examining the photos it appears the solid dark red actually started in 1967. A centennial year paint job perhaps? I have no photos from 1965 or 1966 however to confirm that it wasn't any earlier but the 1967 shot we have definitely is the first shot we have so far to show the solid red paint job.
http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... n_1967.jpg

I think the sun-side shot should be the colour sample you pull. It is not the same as the RGB I gave you because it is not from the same time frame. The RGB I gave you is defintely dark enough but is from the No. 32 engine model and has more red that brown in it. Something like the colour on the header of this page.

[Dan Conlin]

Fun to see the station take form digitally at the same time I am working on an HO model in old fashioned basswood 3-D. Paul I am impressed at how you have put together all the detaisl on the less frequently photographed back side.
I think the overall straw yellow colour lasted until the mid 1940s. The one postcard we have that shows it in the 1930s with an overall reddish brown paint job is pretty crude and dubious hand tinted photo.

Dan Conlin

[Paul Charland]

Hi Dan,

Back in '91 I sold all my standard gauge HO models and jumped into HOn3. I started buying the RGS Story series of books and planned a small switching layout based on Vance Jumction with a couple of Placerville warehouses added so I'd have something to switch. I started building structures board-by-board, eventually leading to the Vance Junction depot hitting over 5400 individual parts. People thought I was nuts to be doing that kind work but it was the most relaxing and the most enjoyment I got out of the hobby. Wonder what the parts count on the Kentville station would have been, Vance Junction depot was only 22 X 40!

Those tinted postcards always leave you wondering how accurate they are. There are a couple questionable ones in the Wiki for the station in Kentville, most of the station is unpainted with only the fascia and other minor trim being painted... white, grey, unpainted wood, you're guess is as good as mine!

Paul

[stem]

I think then that Jim Taylor's 1942 photo of the station is particularly significant when combined with the anecdotal information you have heard.

http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?tit ... ationf.jpg

What is interesting is the station at this point is still yellow. Now one can argue about the shade or red in a B&W photo but unless some very strong filters were used to alter the greyscale of this photo, it is clearly a light colour with a dark colour for trim. This is significant because anecdotal information indicates the station was painted red in WW2; now we know it was not before 1942. They did however obviously reshingle the roof at some point in time as the coloured bands on the central tower are gone.

[Paul Charland]

Hi Steve,

After looking through my collection, which really can be found in the pages of the Wiki, the station appears to be a light grey/tan color with dark brown trim, including the lower three or for clapboard on the Kentville station. Postcards from the same era show Grand Pre, and Digby panted the same less the lower dark brown "water table". Kingston was painted the same as the Kentville station but it was wooden shingle siding and the lower three feet are painted dark brown. In a color shot from the late fifties Kingston has been repainted to match the Kentville 1954 shot, medium brown with the trim painted either a really dark brown or black.

Neat stuff!

Paul

[stem]

Clifton and Coldbrook were that tan, cream or is this actually what everyone is calling the straw yellow along with the dark brown trim whilst those Kingston and Kentville station's dark trim looks like that gun metal grey or whatever they painted the smokebox on locomotivies with to me. My colour perception in extremely dark ranges has know to be off though.

[Paul Charland]

Hi Steve,

Yes, tan, straw, cream, I think they are all one and the same! Coldbrook Station also had the lower dark color, hard to tell exactly what it is as I've not seen the sunny side of any of these stations what have the dark color. I'm leaning towards a dark brown with the tan and really dark grey with the medium brown of the mid fifties... but that's what I think I see on my monitor, results may vary!

Paul

[stem]

I was playing with this dark brown colour tonight and what I can say with confidence is this building colour is the same as the boxcar brown colour. It also works for some (not all) of the passenger coaches parked behind the station sometimes. Let's face it, we all know that in NS, if there's paint in a can, if going to be used for anything and everything so it is most likely they use the same boxcar brown for everything.

PhotoShop bears that out. While there were different brightnesses to deal with everything I play with would come back to an RGB value of around 60, 50 45. Try it yourself. I'm sure you'll end up agreeing it's as close as anything else we've got!