Hey all! Recently bought an N Scale KATO RS2, and made up this paint scheme to paint it in : 
Since my B&CCS is closely related to the New Haven, I based it off New Haven RS1 and RS2 Schemes pre-McGinnis Era, like this : 
I was wondering if anyone had any advice on getting those nice, smooth curves in front of and behind the cab? Hope you are all well, and that you are all having a good holiday season.
Hi Dennis
There’s some Fine Line auto body tapes that may work. I had some 1/8-inch stuff that curved some pretty tight curves on my trunk jams when I was doing some interior restoration on my Mustang.
I do believe they make thinner tapes as well. I’ve seen some pretty tight curved ghost flame jobs on some Harleys.
I hope I’m barking up the right tree for ya. If not auto body tapes, there has to be other tapes for that sort of thing out there. All I can say is it sure was a razor sharp line when I pulled the tape off.
TF
I’ve never done it. But I would try to use a compass or a template of the correct size to draw a perfect semi circle on to proper masking tape (blue painters or thinner), then carefully cut out out the semi circle.
You can make the straight edges with other pieces of tape as long as you align them perfectly with others as you apply them.
And then you would paint most of the sides with the blue color first. Mask, then paint the unmasked majority of the loco brown.
Edit: did not notice the yellow pin stripe. As TF said, auto pinstripe curves sharply, but my goodness that would be really sharp in N scale.
Could make a slighty bigger template than the one for the blue. Paint blue, mask over the blue with your smaller circles; paint yellow, then mask over what youve done with the slightly bigger circles, then paint unmasked brown. Remove tape. It would be a real challenge to get that gold line perfect.
I model HO not N, I made templates on my CAD then overlaid them on 3M Scotch-Blue 2080 masking tape then shot them with my airbrush.
First template SP orange on SP red.
Second template silver stripe.
I’ve painted eight HO E7As and 18 passenger cars this way, Southern Pacific Daylight color.
EDIT:
1/16" and ⅛" 3M blue automotive masking tape will curve sharp.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
Turned 84 in July, aging is definitely not for wimps.
If I were painting the loco in the sketch, I’d first paint the hoods yellow, then apply masking tape to cover what would eventually become the yellow stripes.
You could then paint either the blue area or the brown, and once it’s dry, mask it and apply the third colour, then, once dry, remove all of the tape.
As an alternative, you could do the blue and brown colours in-turn, then mask-off for the second colour. The stripes could be done using a sheet of clear decal paper, painted yellow, then cut-out in strips for the straight striping. To cut-out the curve, a draughting compass equipped with a suitable blade should work…one pass for the inside of the curve, and after a suitable re-adjustment of the compass, another pass for the outside of the curve.
Wayne
Tamiya also makes curvable masking tape in several widths.
https://www.tamiyausa.com/shop/finishing/masking-tape-for-curves-3mm/
Microscale makes a liquid paint on masking fluid although that doesn’t directly solve your problem.
You can draw the circle in thin cardboard you need with compasses that hold a pencil. Use that template to cut the masking tape.
Painting the main brown colour first would likely work best.
Frankly it’s trying to paint just that pinstripe that’s the challenge. Most modellers would rely on a decal for pinstriping. It might be possible to print your own decal pinstripe of appropriate shape or remotely possible to cut a decal pinstripe out. I don’t have that skill level.
I did note your prototype does not have a pinstripe dividing line between colours.
That Tamiya tape does seem to stick down well which is going to be essential as one of the reasons pinstriping is applied in the prototype world is to create sharp colour boundaries hard to achieve with regular painting techniques.
Correct, the prototype has no pinstripe, I added the pinstripe to match the rest of my locomotives (that I’ve repainted), which earned their stripe as a result of my first repainting effort (the SD40-2) using the existing lines of the CNW scheme the model was in. That was about 5 years ago now, and I was very inexperienced, so I simply painted over the existing paint. I have since stripped everything off and repainted the model, but kept the scheme the same since I really liked how it looked, as seen here :
The pinstripe itself doesnt worry me, as you can see I’ve done them before, its the curve in it that was worrying me, but thanks to all the wonderful people on the forums here, I think I have some good ideas to try. Thank you all so much for the input, and Happy Holidays to all! Have fun modeling!
Judging by your photo you have the skill you need. Probably flexible masking tape will be all you need, you already have the steady hands.