Shell colours

[Phil Hetherington]

Hi folks,
One of the railway projects being undertaken by some colleagues of mine is the restoration of a 1948 tank wagon which was part of the combined Shell-BP fleet. It started life in black livery with white lettering, then at some time was repainted yellow with 'SHELL LUBRICATING OIL' in large red letters. We'd like to restore it back to this later, more colourful livery but we have been unable to find details of paint colour codes etc.

Someone suggested to me that the historic road vehicle movement probably contains people who have details of what shades of yellow and red Shell used to use since they undoubtedly used the same colours on their road vehicles. I'm guessing the era we're talking about was some time in the 60s, give or take. Can anyone help with this query, or failing that does anyone have contacts who could help?

Sorry it's nothing to do with Standards, but there you go!
Cheers,
Phil

[magnet]

Hello Phil,
I like a diverse interest!
Probably the bleeding obvious as they say, but Shell has a good website which takes in their history and the dated progression of their logo which should lead you towards suitable colours. They may of course give you direct information on their specified (RAL? ) colours.
Failing that, I guess you could resort to enlarging the on- screen logo and taking your lap top along to the local larger scale paint suppliers who should be able to come up with the colour via. a spectrometer type system off your image.
Hope this helps,
Kind regards, Gareth.

[magnet]

Hello Phil,
A bit more:-
For yellow we have Shell canary yellow - Herberts/standox reference 15170
Shell pale yellow No.28 - Ref. 08687.
Shell yellow - Ref. 08585.

It seems there was only one red:- Shell red - ref. 08587.
These references tend to apply to a paint then known as Superfleet although they were available in two pack as well.
These are taken from 1990 information - close enough to be meaningful for your period, but possibly too old to translate into present day. Still too much info. Is perhaps better than none at all.
Good luck with it Phill.
Kind regards, Gareth.

[Phil Hetherington]

Hi Gareth,
Stating the obvious maybe but I hadn't thought of that. I had contacted Shell's archivist and got nowhere, but then again I was asking about other things besides the colours so may have confused the issue. We will have to delve further into which yellow it is but I don't think it would be the pale one, so one of the others. We will have to get our paint experts to decipher the codes - fortunately we know a friendly independent paint shop owner.

Thanks, SMC forum to the rescue again!
Phil