I’m building the Masterbox “Road To The Rear” farmers wagon for a diorama and I’m wondering about painting it. How would it be painted, or would it be painted in Germany or France during the WW2 era? In the US they were usually brightly colored, but I don’t have any reference to how they were finished in Europe.
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No paint.
Armies paint their wagons but farmers don’t waste money on paint
for a horse drawn wagon.
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I agree 
This one is from Poland
and this one is Danish
H.P.
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Ukrainian one
More examples :
https://www.alamyimages.fr/photos-images/chariot-de-ferme-antique.html?sortBy=relevant
H.P.
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Thank you very much! I was all set to paint it then it hit me that I have no idea if they even painted them. The more I looked at black and white photos and videos I started thinking either they were all whitewashed or natural.
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Typing European farm wagons into Google search gave me plenty of images of American farm wagons but zero European farm wagons. Google went down hill since they started using AI.
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Try typing words like boerenwagen or bauernkutschen…
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Wouldn’t these carts be painted as paint protects the wood?
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The carts usually wear out before the wood rots out.
Paint will get damaged and chipped and then the protection
is gone anyway.
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In case of ceremonial use, like death, marriage or going to church, lacquered or even elaborate painted versions were used. The ones used for field labour, like the one depicted and on the box were not painted in any way…
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For us, modern people living in first world countries it’s probably hard to understand how hard the life was and how economy worked in the countryside those 100 - 120 years ago. And from what my grandpa told me, eastern Poland and Soviet Union were about further 100 years behind the civilization of Germany. Imagine people being effectively slaves, having the obligation to work for the land owner. Imagine economy where you try, if possible not to use money at all because you don’t get any - barter is mostly the thing. So you can trade the grain you grew for some lumber, and you can use it to get some iron fittings from the local smith, but you don’t have no source for reasonable paint that wouldn’t want money in return. Oiling the wood might do the trick, if the oil wasn’t needed more badly for cooking.
If you want to try to look up Polish carts, the phrase would be “wóz drabiniasty” or “wóz chłopski”. The first one is funny because it means rougly “ladder cart”.
Hope it helps, have a nice day
Paweł
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If pine or fir forests are available then tar could be an option but it gets sticky
and it is a lot cheaper/easier to simply replace the wood when it goes bad.
The iron fittings just get moved onto the next wagon (heap of lumber)
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