Please don't use the color recommendations on the Niles Depot website (which formerly
were on the Centerville Depot website). The colors for depot walls and trim are WRONG.
The Colonial Yellow is too light and the trim color isn't even close to light brown.
In fact, the Niles Depot website doesn't even list the color the SP officially called
Light Brown, instead listing a much darker shade of brown the website calls "Samoa Brown,"
a color name that the SP never used.

My conclusion about the accuracy of the colors recommended by the Niles Depot website
is based on paint samples of Colonial Yellow and Light Brown I obtained from a
Bakersfield SP Buildings & Bridges Department employee back in 1965. The paint samples
have been keep in glass jars out of the light since then and probably are the most pristine
surviving examples of SP's Colonial Yellow and Light Brown colors anywhere.

Because of the influence of the Centerville Depot/Niles Depot websites, a whole bunch of restored wooden SP depots have probably been painted incorrectly but there are a few cases
of restored depots being properly painted. When I compared my Colonial Yellow sample with the wall color used on the restored Goleta depot, I couldn't see any difference. The Light Brown trim on the Goleta depot was a bit different than my sample but only is noticeable in a close-up examination. In looking at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum's website, it appears that the Campo and La Mesa depots have been painted properly, at least based on the photos on their website.

The mineral red color used on most freight docks on SP combination depots is interesting
to me. SP specs for both buildings and freight cars called this mineral red color "Metallic" but the boxcar red of SP freight cars was not the same shade as used on buildings (some people disagree with me on this). Mineral red for SP buildings probably goes back to at least
the mid-1880s when the SP started painting its depots gray with roofs that were painted "red" according to newspaper reports. When the SP first started repainting depots Colonial Yellow in Nevada in 1903 and California in 1906, press accounts indicate that roofs continued to be "red" (the first documented use of moss green for roofs by the SP was in 1912). 1910 SP plans for a passenger shelter shed confirm that this "red" was in fact Metallic. Also, 1910 SP plans for the depot at Moorpark indicated that both the roof and the freight dock were to be painted Metallic.

There are still a few examples around on surviving SP buildings of the Metallic/mineral red/"red" color. I noticed last year the color could be seen on parts of the dock of the restored San Luis Obispo freight house and the color still exists on the turntable operator's shack at Bakersfield.

John Sweetser