With the discontinuance of the Polly Scale line, I am foreseeing an eventual problem with the equipment that I paint. I have managed to scrounge up a jar each of F404052 (MEC Pine Green) and F414143 (ATSF Silver). However, I anticipate needing to find similar paint at some point in the future to continue painting my own equipment.
Doing a quick Walthers search shows no MEC Pine Green paint other than in Polly Scale. I also get the same problem for the ATSF Silver. I have downloaded a couple of cross-reference lists but neither list has either of my colors on them.
I have read that Testors will bring out a new line of select colors in acrylics but the way it sounds it will be the weathering colors only. Does anyone know close equivalents to my colors with or without having to mix them?
I would prefer water-based but if I have to go back to solvent-based, I would want to do it in Scalecoat II. I do some work with a SC II color as I was unable to find that color in anything but that line.
Have you looked into ModelFlex? They offer a broad range of railroad colors [didn’t see MEC green though, but maybe you could find something close enough to custom mix it?].
I needed Burlington Northern Green but since my LHS didn’t much of any PollyScale left, I tried ordering ModelFlex’s version (#16-26) thru him from Walthers. I was pretty impressed with it - it has a thin-enough viscosity that I can air brush it straight from the jar, yet the pigment is dense enough for me to use it for touch-up brush painting as well.
Have you looked into TRUColor paint? Take a look here. They have a MEC Pine Green #102. Shoot them an email and they will email you back a full color chart of what they have in pdf format.
The paint itself is ready to shoot from the jar, acetone based. Sprays evenly, lays thin, coverage is excellent,and it dries quickly. So quick in fact that I did a 3 color paint job in an afternoon without any paint lifting!
Now it is new. Actually its a reformulation of the old Accupaint by SMC. If your LHS doesn’t carry it, find one that does! You will be sold! Then beat on your favorite LHS to get some![:D]
I completely forgot about the ModelFlex colors. (oops!) I have used the Badger Modelflex Colors before as well. Ironically enough, it was the BN Green for the floor of a woodchip car. If I could get a proper mix, I would be willing to use that as well. As I don’t use an airbrush due to the lack of proper facilities, a good covering paint would work wonderfully.
I presume that line considers the Silver (#77) as a universal silver. Of course I’m in one of those places I don’t have a LHS. All I have is either a THS (Telephone Hobby Shop), a IHS (Internet Hobby Shop) or Walthers. The other question is how does it brush paint as I don’t have the facilities for an airbrush setup.
Are you referring to their #16-32? They call that one ‘Santa Fe Silver’ by name, so I’m thinking it would work fine for your purpose…
By “facilities”, do you mean a workshop with a spray booth? Since ModelFlex is water-based [i.e. non-flammable], it’s safe to spray indoors - as long as you cover everything in the surrounding area. [I’ve done spray painting in my family room and laundry room during the winter months.] There are plenty of inexpensive airbrushes on the market if all you need is to spray a single color over a broad area.
As for brush painting, I haven’t tried doing a broad area yet with ModelFlex. But when I get home later this evening, I’ll see if I can find a piece of ‘junk’ rolling stock to experiment on and share the results here.
As for the facilities, I was more referring to a previous post talking about the TRUcolor paints (which are solvent-based). For that reason I like to work with water-base paints. Clean up is obliviously a lot easier as well.
I have worked with the ModelFlex before. (As a matter of fact, I have a bottle of ModelFlex Flat Finish on order as I can’t get PS Flat anymore.)
I do have an airbrush. However, I have found that painting by brush gives me more control on the paint and with the right size brush I can paint pretty much in any “hole” I need.
Well, here it is - I promised I’d post photos of the results of my ModelFlex hand-paint experiment. But I only managed to snap a single photo before my camera battery went dead [banghead]. I wanted to get a photo while some areas were still wet, and another after it completely dried; but I only got the partially ‘wet’ shot.
This is what a single-coat application looks like. The light-colored spots in the green are still wet, otherwise everything would be the medium shade. Some areas are a bit thin, primer would’ve produced a better result but I didn’t put any down - it wouldn’t have cured enough in the short time frame, and the ModelFlex paint would’ve reacted unfavorably with it, similar to the way milk curdles in lemon juice.
I painted the top door rail separately, after the paint adjacent to it had dried.
What the image doesn’t show is that there are zero brush streaks, and the dried paint surface is mirror-smooth gloss.
Definitely not an exact substitute for PollyScale, but with a little more practice, I believe I can make it produce the kind of results I want…