No one else chimed in so I’ll take a crack at it. Seems to me that it would have followed NP/SP&S practice. This is out of my geographic area of knowledge but I think the body would be their standard freight car color of the day, any and all metal bits & pieces were black and the roof was asphalt over canvas.

Hopefully, someone that knows better than me will correct that.

I'm thinking so as well. I've got a copy of Paul Hobbs book and the early cabooses were cherry red. Of course there are a million varients of cherry red. There is a mix of black vs white handrail with later rails being black and white striped in Paul's book.

Thank you,
Patrick

They start laying the roof tomorrow.

Today's progress.

Got the main part of the roof covered. Cupola tomorrow.

Sandblasted the handholds today. Found 3 layers of paint. Bottom layer was black, followed by red and white. We're going with black.

Black hardware, freight car brown body and white lettering. I think you’ll be looking quite 1938-ish.

Posing with the Seaside Shortline Railway!

All ready for roofing and siding!

I'm sandblasting all the railings, handholds and brackets. I use a zinc chromate primer on the bare metal followed by 3 coats of Zero Rust. Zero Rust is a high solids phyenolic-modified alkyd coating. It will fade over time, so I top coat it with 2 coats of Industrial Krylon.

I tried colorizing the 1938 photo with some free online programs and the caboose always comes out reddish brown. It's going to have to be more red than that! I'll be looking at some color chips in the cherry red area, as described in Paul Hobbs book.

I've got three varients of marker lamp brackets. Two have "PM 574 NP" with a NP symbol cast into the bracket. One has "PM 574 NP" without the symbol. The 4th is lightly stamped "662".

Windows are western red cedar. Glass and siding should be here tomorrow.

Western red cedar on the platform ceiling.

Assuming OE and SP&S followed the NP, you’d be looking at freight car color - mineral brown/red in 1938. I don’t think bright red came in until the 50s. Though as I said, I’m not an expert on NP and subsidiaries. I’d contact the NP Historical Society and see what they say.