Droplights

Morning everyone. I am about to start painting some scratch built Spanish style narrow gauge coaches. Nevertheless I cannot find a colour photograph anywhere that indicates that the droplight windows could have been anything other than varnished wood finish.

Does anyone know if it is possible to have a painted droplight window finished in the same way as the main coach side. I appreciate that a lot of coaches were finished in varnished wood anyway, so my question only refers to coaches that were painted.


Many thanks,
David

Its funny you posted that David i was about to PM you on the subject of spanish metre gauge. I 'googled' and found the same problem as i have with French carriages; no colour pics exist (not of old style anyway), but all seemed to be varnished. would that be because of the higher temperatures down there ( paint not wearing well)?. Lets see some pics soon though!

Mikey

Not sure Mikey, but I know varnished coaches, whilst very common in the 60s and 70s, were high maintenance, so it could be that as paint technology improved companies then started to paint their wooden sided coaches to reduce costs.

By the way a totally irrelevant and useless piece of information, though maybe interesting, is that both my next door neighbours but one, have started building live steam 32/45mm railways. That makes 3 systems within 200 metres.

I can't offer you any exact help on this except for my Spanish - Madrid tram build.



Patrick may know a bit more or there is a really knowledgeable chap called Martin Witt ('Via Estrecha' was his pseudo on GSM). I've tried to contact to him previously but to no avail.

Sorry I don't have a clue about this.