@Ron H posted:If you can find color photos of a water tower you like, then you can paint and stain it accordingly. this is a tower for my 1/20.3 railroad copied from the tower at,,I think,, Alamosa. Good luck.
That certainly is a beautiful water tower. However, the original poster is inquiring about a "wooden coaling tower", which tended to weather quite a bit differently as a result of the fairly high sulphur product inside. Not to mention all the coal dust from resupplying the coal tower to fueling steam locomotives.