Model steam engine paint

This Stuart Turner was built by the late great model engineer John Bertinat i have a few of his steam engines bought from eBay when part of his collection was sold on eBay some six or seven years ago now i have one of John Bertinats Stuart Turner 5A's built to an exemplary standard and is superbly engineered with a mechanical lubricator and a gear driven boiler feed pump fitted to it's own dedicated base casting.

Hi Patrick,

Sorry I haven't been on the forum in a while. That seems like a good color, you will have to post some pics of the project later on.

Hey Parker. It was good to meet another American Stuart enthusiast and it was especially encouraging to see that young people are actually interested in this sort of thing. I very much enjoyed enjoyed looking at your models and talking with you at Thresharee. More to the point, I've thought about this as well, and I've decided that British Racing Green is the shade I'll be using when the time comes to paint my victoria (I'll be ordering it from Stuart next week, most likely.

A very detailed post Ray, thanks for taking the time to post that, very interesting!

Thanks Ray, that was helpful and very interesting.

Hi Charlotte,

I hope this is what Keith intended when you started this much needed website?

I posted a lengthy reply on the subject of Stuart Green on another Forum, I have updated and posted it below. Everything that has been said on this thread is correct specifically the IATA rules on paint carriage. If you read this post you may understand part of the history of this Green paint. My advice to Parker is find a local car body repair shop with experience of old European cars, they might be able to mix paint to international recognised standards for him.

Here is a summary of the Stuart livery for you.

I own a collection of the original photographs from the Stuart catalogues, they date from around 1906. Unsurprisingly, these are all black and white but they have been retouched to emphasis the polished metalwork, really nice work. These were the standard photographs used in the catalogues and in Model Engineer magazine for many years.

The first colour catalogue published by Stuarts was September 1983, a mixture of colour and B&W photos were used throughout. These photographs show a mixture of livery, some are green all over and some are green with a black boxbed. Even in the B&W photos it is possible to see the contrasting colours.

Looking back through the older catalogues, very few complete engines were offered as painted, The No 4 with Avery Dynamo specifically states it is enamelled in green. The BB with Bottone Dynamo was offered as a complete engine finished in green - a completely different green very light (probably GPO electrical plant green). The S50 was all black for many years, it was dipped black enamel.

So my understanding is where a complete engine was offered as painted, that’s exactly what you got and possibly painted in whatever paint was available. If it wasn’t stated you end up with an unpainted engine which you could paint any colour you wanted to!

Stuart’s evolved as a business and very early in their history started to move away from just model steam engines. Just about everything (non model engines) I have seen produced by them, charging sets, marine engines etc appears to be painted in green. I have no doubt the “green” varied depending on the customer preference, the old War Department probably specified a shade of olive drab (see the Firefly Charging set) - the basic colour a military things for years, the GPO (well before BT) probably specified a lighter green which was their standard colour at the time.

There was an urban myth on another forum, which may or may not be true, that Stuarts varied the shade of the green paint to identify who worked on a specific engine, perhaps as an early version of quality control? Engine returned for repair and they could identify who built it. I am not convinced, the bigger items, charging sets or marine engines etc, would be identified by serial number.

Perhaps, the myth is correct in some part. The paint varied in shade for a number of reasons including availability, usage, environmental and supplier.

The earliest catalogue reference I can find to a Paint Set is 1995/96, two small tins with Black and Stuart Green high quality steam proof enamel paint.

First off, there is no recognised British Standard (BS) or International Standard (RAL) for “Stuart Green”. Looking at the website of, and discussing this with, a professional paint supplier - Paragon Paint - supports this view. Although Paragon now provide Stuart Green it does not appear to be a standardised colour, either way their website is worth a visit!

My experience after having used numerous tins of “Stuart Green” over many years shows the shade varies. All paints stirred and used according to usual practices and painted on to prepared and primed surfaces, yes the shades vary. Quite possibly a supplier issue and not using a recognised, codified, colour.

I have even gone to the lengths of having engines professionally sprayed by a high quality vintage car restorer using state of the art paint matching technology. My brother in law worked there. Put the engines against other “Stuart Green” engines and, you have got it, there are shade variations!

Whichever way I have looked at this, I have not been able to consistently paint engines in a standard “Stuart Green”.

It is personal preference and, in my case all green or green and black, perhaps a touch of red flywheel suits me fine.

I have tried various suppliers, Humbrol Brunswick Green is too dark (for my tastes)  and some of the Precision Paints range are passable.

So after a lot of time and trial and error I have chosen the most suitable green for me, lots of colour matching and umming and arhhing involved. I am now using Light Bronze Green BS381C 225 as it provides consistency, it is cost effective (500ml tins) and is about the closest I can get to a consistent “Stuart Green”

The big advantages of using a codified colour (BS or RAL or other standard) makes the colour repeatable between batches and easier to acquire locally from a professional supplier.

One final point. Many years ago I had the pleasure of talking model steam engines with John Bertinat (then frail but very sharp mind) for several hours. Through an introduction from Stuarts he was commissioned to make a number of Stuart engines by an American steel magnate, Jerome Greenbaum. The specified livery was light blue/grey (Greenbaum’s company livery) this did not rest well with John and even many years after delivery he was still chuntering about it. He was firmly convinced the only liveries for Stuart engines was green or green and black. Coming from a highly regarded model engineer, that was good enough for me!

Hope that helps you

Ray

Awesome I will look into that.

Due to IATA (International Air Transport Association) regulations, TDG (Transportation of Dangerous Goods) regulations and WHIMIS (Workplace Hazardous Information) regulatios both Stuarts and Blackgates cannot ship oil products and paint to North America. In North America look at Joh Deer "Classic Green" for John Deer equipment manufactured before 1989. This is a dark green metal paint.

Yes I have used humbrol paint before and some of there colors just don't cover well at all. Maybe I just got a bad batch of paint.

Many seem to use Humbrol Brunswick green

Thanks for the info. I found that rust oleum has an enamel paint called gloss hunter green and it matches pretty close to the same color. It's just a little lighter so I mixed in some black and I looks great.

Part of the challenge is that Stuart Models specifically states that they won't ship paint outside of the EU. I'm in the same boat and what I did was to to search for a dealer for Testor's Model Master enamel gloss paint. I order 1/2 oz. sizes of every green color they had in gloss. I'll see how it works out

Hi Parker,

You have two options.

1) Contact Stuart Models at www.stuartmodels.com

2) If you want to use the shade of green that my Dad uses on his Stuart 5A Steam Engine you can get this from Blackgates Engineering at www.blackgates.co.uk.

Both companies do worldwide mail order.

Thanks for your question and I hope you find the perfect paint!

Charlotte