From looking at photos, they started either Brown or Red from the shop. New Colors changes over the years.
Within a year, they faded to tan or pink (Blush or Bashful?) or some other color with gulf coast salt or west Texas sun.
Add dirt and no two cars were the same color.

Luke
Many of the 1948 cabooses were still in the freight car brown paint in the mid-1970’s. Tru-Color MKT Freight Car Brown (TCP-188) is a good match. As cabooses were repainted to a ‘caboose red’ it was a red shade that as Thomas stated faded to an orange-red over the years. Look at a google search image on Missouri Pacific cabooses and see the variations. What I never saw was a dark red.
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Here’s a link to the Missouri Pacific Historical Society gallery showing various cabooses and the color variations.

http://mopac.org/archives/online-images-and-documents/rolling-stock/cabooses

A good source for the question on caboose color is the caboose book. I wrote it in the late 1980s. Should still be available in the secondary market. Jerry Michels

I did a little research on this subject a few years ago, but I can’t find my information at the moment. Tru-Color offers several different reds and I don’t recall which was a good match for the bright red that was used on cabooses in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

If you are looking for real accuracy, I suggest that you go to your nearest Axalta paint dealer and ask for a drift card for Imron Safety Red or Fire Protection Red (they are the same). It is an exact match for the Imron paint that the Sedalia caboose shop was using during that timeframe. This is the paint that I used when I restored MP 13569. Once you have the drift card, you can compare it to the various model paint colors until you come up with one that you feel closely matches it.

You got it Jim. The criticism I wrote in the caboose book was a warning that the red paint was fading rapidly when the alkali (I think) washing solution was used. It was switched to an acid wash which stopped the fading. However, I think in the meantime,the caboose paint was changed. I’d like to see more information on this, but it may be lost to history. Caboose orange, to me, is kind of pleasing, but so is the vermilion red the railroad used. When I bring out my Jenks blue GP7s, I tag a “Caboose Orange” Sedalia welded caboose on the end of the train.