I am completing painting a Kato SD9043MAC in the BNSF Premium paint scheme.and was wondering hwo many others paint locomotives into the colors of their favorite railroad.
I’m an Southern Pacific nut. For the last 5 or 6 years I have been buying used locomotives off eBay. I seldom find one painted in SP colors so as part of my restoral process I paint all of them. The non Daylight diesel locomotives are painted black with the SP Silver stripe theme and the Daylight diesels are painted in SP Daylight colors. All of my steam but one GS4 4-8-4 are black, the one GS4 is a Bachmann DCC Sound that I bought new in SP Daylight Colors.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
I model the IC in 1955. Passenger E units are readily available as are the GP7s and 9s. I am painting an E8 in Central of Georgia colors to model the pool power that ran on the City of Miami. The Es first ran on the IC in the blue and grey CG scheme and later they were painted like the IC locos in brown and orange.
I’m currently looking at starting my first painting/decaling project of a undecorated shell: A newer Walthers SW1 (NYC scheme). At least the paint job should be pretty straightforward. [:)]
After I get experience with that, I eventually would like to tackle an early NYC FT (with “cat-whisker” striping), an early NYC HH-600 (pre-'48 scheme), and two NYC H12-44s, which were painted with lightning stripes; very uncommon for NYC yard switchers.
Except for the FT, I have all the above undecorated shells sitting in a box awaiting their new identity. Not sure when I’ll get to them, as I am between layouts and trying to sell our current home because of a job relocation. For now I’m in the planning/learning stages but looking forward to the day when I can start.
Tom
I used to paint a lot of my locomotives because for a while I didn’t like the UP colors used by manufacturers and for years you couldn’t get much CB&Q “black bird” equipment.
Now the paint jobs are so much better plus I have certain health isues around paint fumes, so I rarely do a complete repaint anymore, but it DOES happen on occasion.
It is a lot of fun to be able to do your own paint and decals. For a while I tried to do it on a custom basis but most guys don’t want to pay you a fair amount for the actual time spent doing the painting, so it wasn’t worth it.
I’ve done freelance before, but never a real one. I’ve got a pair of GP40-2s waiting to be converted into Allegheny Valley units.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=475311&nseq=39
AVR has GP40-3s, but they haven’t been rescued from their gray paint schemes and given the maroon and black. I’ve designed the decals and haven’t got much past that. Heck, not even sure what color works!
I model an era of the B&O that has never been very popular (1968-72) so I really had no choice but to paint my own. Luckily Microscale has high-quality decals available for that period, both letters and striping - all I really need to do is cover the body shell in Enchantment Blue, then apply the decals.
I was brush-painting locomotives and rolling stock for my free-lanced railroad, like these Model Power FAs…
…then one day decided to paint a couple of Athearn Blue Box geeps for my favourite prototype. At that time, there was no commercially available lettering other than a set in bright yellow, in the wrong size and font, and no pre-mixed colours.I used Polly S paint to mix the colours to match a photo of the prototypes, and in a multi-step procedure, brush-painted using dry transfer alphabets as masking devices, in order to get the proper colour for the lettering and striping. The cab heralds were done with a brush, using a free-handed pencil sketch on the cab’s sides. The two diesels turned out quite nicely, so I submitted a short article on the procedure to MR’s Paint Shop, and it was duly accepted.
In the meantime, not having any model railroading friends or acquaintances, I took the two locos to my LHS, more-or-less just to show them off. [:-^][:$]
The owner asked if he could keep them for a couple of weeks, as the railroad has a fanatical local following, and he was sure that others would enjoy seeing them. I somewhat reluctantly agreed to leave them.
When I went back two weeks later, and was packing them back in their box, he reached under the counter and produced a dozen boxes of undecorated geeps. “Can you do these?” he asked. After a bit of discussion, I agreed.
When I brought those back, another two dozen were waiting.
I eventually bought an airbrush (a timesaver for actual painting, but not as far as masking was concerned. For brush painting, I didn’t need to mask, as my hands were pret