French Napoleonic Pontoniers Uniform/Equipment Help please?

[Atheling]

Hi,

I'm a bit stuck for a couple of uniform questions and the colour of the actual ponts.

If anyone is able to help with any of these uniform/equipment questions that would be a fantastic help to me. And of course be very much appreciated!

I've enclosed some pics and what I wanted to know was what uniforms would the guys I've circled be wearing?

And, would the whole of the pontoon boat be painted French Artillery Green or would the metal sides have been left as bare metal?

Here are the pics:



Was their uniform really this sky blue?


Equipment- planks etc? Were they Artillery Green pre-fabrications?


Metal sides of ponts, were they artillery green or just left as care metal? If so, what sort of metal?


Thanks, hopefully someone in the know can help me out

Darrell.

[Arthur]

French Napoleonic line pontonniers were attached to the corps of artillery and wore the dark blue artillery uniform shown below :



The mounted figures are conducteurs du train whose job was to drive horse teams : they belonged to a separate corps and therefore had a different uniform of sky blue faced brown. Here's one of them on the right :



However, the figures you have circled are an Imperial Guard engineer officer and an ADC. The officer is wearing a undress surtout and should look like the figure on the right below :



Re the ADC, use the plate below for reference - sorry, the pic is rather small and I don't have anything larger but the colours can be easily made out. I'd use the figure on the left with the nice red hussar breeches :



The pontoons themselves appear to have been mostly painted artillery green, though I've sometimes seen illustrators depict them in natural wood. I'd go for artillery green myself.  



The planks and beams would obviously left in their natural wood colour.

Hope this helps

[PAULSPENCE]

Crumbs!

What a comprehensive answer has been provided by Arthur.

Might get some of these....

Cheers,

Paul

[Atheling]

Thanks!! Arthur to the rescue again!!

I'll save the pic and print them out.

Thanks matey 

Darrell.

[Arthur]

You're welcome, Darrell.

While I'm at it, the blue of the Imperial Guard Engineers officer appears a tad too light in the plate above, probably because of the vagaries of colour reproduction : it's actually a dark indigo blue.

The pontonniers being a part of the artillery corps, the team drivers will also most likely belong to the train d'artillerie rather than the train des équipages. Same uniform with different facing colour as the plate below shows :

[Atheling]

Thanks Arthur- you're a star mate 

Darrell.

[rumacara]

Darrell, thanks for asking.
If not you i would probably ask the same for i have the sets to paint.
Arthur, thanks for the info. Really usefull and inspirational.

[Atheling]

Darrell, thanks for asking.
If not you i would probably ask the same for i have the sets to paint.
Arthur, thanks for the info. Really usefull and inspirational.

Arthur normally comes up trumps with uniform questions etc 

Darrell.