Roger that on RDG 801. The photo next to the Reading Shop building is exposed for the red brick; the yellow and green are too light because they're overexposed. The in-service photo shows it close to the same color as the GP-35.

Note the puny shifter blat-type horn embedded in the short hood of the 801. Totally unfitting for a TrainMaster!

Incidentally RDG's TM's shared numbers 800-808 and 860-867 with MU cars. Operators had to specify "MU Engine 863" when writing train orders for MU trains. After RDC's bumped all the TM's to freight and mostly to Hagerstown WM to Allentown CNJ "Crossline" service (where they would not encounter an MU car) they were renumbered into the 200's. 260-267 had been vacated after the F-units with those numbers had been rebuilt into GP-35's.

Phil Mulligan

It is what it is, Eric, only a valid attempt to determine the true paint colors of the Reading while providing alternative examples thereof and I consider our back and forth exchanges an asset, not a detriment. It's not sort of any rivalry or competition, either. We all have our skills and knowledge and combining those in a positive manner will always produce positive results. I just happen to be pretty damned good at color and especially greens, that's all...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=evergreen+lan ... &ia=images

If you have a well-informed idea about the technical aspects of some of these pictures I'm posting, please, let us all know!!! Good color images of the Reading Train Masters don't seem to be very common, especially of one that may have been painted in a test scheme so, like I've heard on the teevee once or twice before, you go to war with what you have. Once, I was the art and layout design editor of our high school yearbook so yeah, sometimes you can only pick and choose among what's available at the time.

Plenty of research on a vast variety of subjects has taken place over the years reaching conclusions that were later found to be erroneous. Just because it was on an old engineering drawing doesn't necessarily mean it was actually applied and I still can't find any Grande Gold/Duco Orange on anything Reading. LOL

The Reading's paint colors were simple and straightforward although an anomaly or two may exist. They're also apparently easy to screw up but hey, it's Norfolk Southern's locomotive and they can finish it any way they'd like to. Despite any real or imagined flaws in the paint job, #1067's still the finest looking diesel in their entire fleet.

I'd definitely try to use this one if I was preparing a new publication...

One of the rare instances where they re-used old locomotive numbers, Phil, and at least that was a fairly safe location for a Reading air horn since they seemed to get beat up so much. LOL Another oddball, I've always wondered why SW-900 #1518 had such small road numbers applied to the cab. Doesn't have a rainwater deflector on the roof, either...

Pulled this not-the-best pic of C630 #5306 on garage-robber wheels at the shops in Reading. Attempted to match the background colors, effects, and overall appearance as best I could with the one of #801 on the last page. The sky, the grass, the brick, the black of the herald, even the shadows on the sightly different yellow paints are very close. The sun is a little further along in the sky. Again, the simple binary question, do the greens look like they could be the same color or not?...

It’s likely the same color but to be 100% positive is impossible. Too many variables even in the paint application.

Aspen Gold was used on the F-unit striping and lettering by EMD, as delivered.

If and when I find it, Eric, you'll be the first to know.

Winding down on the 1317, one of the reasons I can spot that particular color so well is the fact that its not really a natural-looking green, at least in my eyes. This attribute would, however, make it a good color for fleet use or advertising because it doesn't blend in all that well with the environment. Even though it more closely resembles a copper oxide, Woodfield Green also shares this characteristic. It's very easy to distinguish a traffic sign from the vegetation that may surround it.

1317's common name is New Idea Green. Another very old fleet color, here are some examples of it being used on its namesake hit/miss engines. First, an original factory paint job with two restorations following. The third pic also has a sample of Waterloo Boy's 5316 to the left...

Another look at the two separate greens used on Reading's cab locos. First, FP-7's #907 and #901 hanging around the shops, #907 with Woodfield Green and #901 with faded Narva. The second pic of the bow of #900 I linked to earlier, taken a year or two before its final Reading repaint, has been cropped to help highlight the difference between the two colors. Obviously, the Narva Green was applied first before delivery...

LOL I'll post these two without comment but if there's a reward for rediscovering something old and exciting about the Reading's post-WWII diesel colors, just send the money to the museum in Hamburg. They'll know what to do with it.

After further analysis and careful consideration, I'll take the Singer/Seven-Up green, 93-57625, as the Reading's Woodfield Green seen here in an old Bob Gottschall slide of a freshly repainted Alco FA-1 #303. It does almost look to me like the trailing unit is still in the Narva...

Some reasoning behind this decision is that the two Singer greens, DuPont 57625 and 98021, do appear on the same fleet lists together as distinct colors. 57625 is more likely the older of the two.

PPG code 40454 shows up on the S-W Formula Express listings for the Zetz Seven Up Bottling Company of New Orleans, Louisiana along with DuPont code 57625 (7237) so they may be the exact same color. The only potential wild card here is DuPont code 7261 for which I haven't found an example as of yet. Could just be its unique Chrysler-instead-of-Ford number. 6195 may actually be the assigned color code to EMD but that has yet to be determined.

I really wouldn't mind picking up a copy of that new Reading Train Master book but I found a 1963 DuPont National Fleet Color Information catalog on Ebag instead. It'll be interesting to see what that may reveal once it arrives sometime this week.

Here are those Zetz Seven Up codes...

Here's an alternative example of some faded GMC Narva Green to help tune your eye to that particular color... LOL

Concerning unique color codes for individual product manufacturers, here is the 1966 DuPont listing for International Harvester. Although the colors themselves will carry over and are standardized for any given year, absolutely none of these codes match any we've discussed so far...

While my DuPont national fleet book continues its journey back and forth along the Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works, here's a couple more metal signs from close to the appropriate time period, one Singer, and the other, Seven Up...

I believe I've pretty much settled on 6202 as the '73 Green Machine green. In these two unretouched as-downloaded photos, a Fairbanks Morse belt pulley and the front of RDG #3402 and well, I can't tell them apart...

Some of these old colors have been rather trendy as of late. Here's Limu Emu and Doug diggin' on that groovy Venetian Yellow...