Beginner's Advice for Painting F-units?

I’ve never tried my hand at painting locomotives. How would a person go about painting an F-unit or E-unit with the typical EMD factory designed striping? I want something similar to Atlantic Coast Line or Southern Railway…just the familiar striping patterns that we all think of when we think of cab unit diesels. Does anyone make a template (specifically for N scale) with pre made designs that can aid an unsteady hand? I don’t think I could do a good even masking job without some kind of stencil or something. Not that I’m too lazy to mask and such, just don’t think I could get a satisfactory result. I hope this makes sense.

Forgive my ignorance if this is something I should already know about lol.

Look for Decals of stripes. With care you can get them to go on straight.

Dakota

Give it a shot, I didn’t think I could airbrush my E series locomotives either. I’m working in HO not N but smaller might even be better.

Here is a link to my blog where I painted my first diesel using masking tape. Since then I’ve repainted my entire diesel fleet, it gets easier with every paint job.

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2014/11/november-9-2014-airbrushing-my-cary-e7a.html

Mel

Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-768&Category_Code=ACL

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-908&Category_Code=ACL

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-773&Category_Code=ACL

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-540&Category_Code=SOU

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-879&Category_Code=SOU

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-62&Category_Code=SOU