My mother used to say, "You learn something new every day." Well, at my age there's some long dry spells and some days are kind of a blur of non-learning blah-ness, but this past couple of days has been interesting. I posted a couple of photos of this early MPC Buckboard in blue SP with red wheels in a couple of my fb groups. In one of them, a member pointed out that these were the colors used by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Hmmm - really?
That led me down a rabbit's hole of Web searches and I have found out some very interesting details. If indeed blue wagons were used by the U.S. Army, it's not because of any standardization program in use by the military, but rather, that's how they were purchased from the wagon makers! Just as we've become so used to automobiles coming in bright colors, it appears that wagons were sold in bright colors as well - at least in blue, perhaps green as well. This was a big surprise to me because as I try to remember back on all those Western TV shows and movies I watched as a kid, I simply don't recall wagons being anything more than either unpainted and weathered wood or perhaps varnished - no colors! Then I came across an on-line article by the National Park Service, Wagons on The Emigrant Trails and nearly every wagon pictured in that article was painted in what I'm surmising as period-correct color schemes.
Early MPC Wagon
What defines it as 'early' is the use of the slot butt driver (slot butt's came out before the peg butts).
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