Polish Railways locomotives paint set vol. 1

The colors of the Polish railways

A railway modeler faces a different problem from someone building aircraft. A locomotive has an exactly prescribed division of surfaces and the colors on it are not blended into a pattern but keep to sharp boundaries between the roof, the carbody, the bogie and the headstocks. This lineup is put together exactly according to that division.

How the shades are divided up

The blue-gray matching RAL 7031 belongs on the roofs of diesel and electric machines alike. The carbody is divided into two bands: yellow-green RAL 6018 covers the upper part at window level and the lower part, and mint green RAL 6029 the middle stripe. The bogie is black to RAL 9005 and the headstocks carry orange RAL 2008.

• Blue-gray RAL 7031 for the roofs of diesel and electric locomotives
• Yellow-green RAL 6018 for the upper and lower part of the carbody
• Mint green RAL 6029 for the middle band of the carbody
• Rapeseed yellow RAL 1021 for the front end, introduced from 1988
• Black RAL 9005 for the running gear and orange RAL 2008 for the headstocks

The rapeseed yellow has a story of its own. It came onto the front ends of locomotives from 1988 as a safety feature, so that an approaching machine could be seen at a greater distance. A model that carries it thereby dates itself to the end of the eighties and later, which is a useful pointer when building a diorama.

The reference to the RAL standard on five of the six items means that you can compare the result with a color chart and not rely only on the impression from a photograph. With the blue-gray roof that goes double, because on period photographs it often looks darker than it really was.