I have been doing some research since Testors announced the discontinuance of the Polly Scale paint line. I have used Polly Scale paint exclusively for over 20 years. I have read a lot on here about other lines of solvent-based paint to replace the Floquil line, but what is available in acrylics to replace Polly Scale? Someone give me some leads please.
Ron
Ron,
Badger Modelflex is also an acrylic paint with lots of model railroad specific colors. It is ‘air brush’ ready - All of the colors are thinned for air brushing. Polly Scale needs to be thinned depending on the pigment. One of the issues with the Badger paint is that it does not ‘brush’ on very good, and I have tended to use Polly Scale for the most part.
Tru Line train paints are also acrylic, but mainly Canadian specific colors. Tru Line paints are made by RPM(owner of Polly Scale) for True Line Trains - I suspect they may be gone as well in a few years.
Tamiya has acrylic paints, but nothing with model railroad specific colors.
Craft stores have several brands of acrylics(Apple Barrel/Creamcoat/FolkArt/etc, but nothing really railroad specific.
Jim
Humbrol also has a fair size line of Acrylic model paints. They have about 25 railroad colors included in the line, which has over 100 colors total. They are available from Hornby America website & most cost around $2.05 per can.
Carl
Testors Modelmaster Acryl line has many colors that duplicate PollyScale shades. The only significant omission is railroad specific colors. Due to tha Rustoleum marketing muscle, these are widely available. I have been using both Mdelmaster and PollyScale for both airbripush and brush painting for years, with excellent results.
I use Vallejo’s Model Colour and Game Colour ranges along with Games workshops Citadel paint range all three ranges are acrylics and very good i have been using the Games workshop range for the past ten years on my war gaming Models the only problems i can i think of is the Games workshop have changed the way there range works and how it’s labeled. and both the Vallejo Game Colour range and Games workshops Citadel paint range have bizarre names
Jim,
I’ve had a different, more positive experience with Modelflex, which I like and find brushes well. I’m painting my track with it as we speak. I do start with Pollyscale SP Lettering Gray as a primer coat, and that might be the difference. I also use artists’ brushes, as i enjoy using acrylics, both craft and artists’, but I don’t know if that affects Modelflex brushability or not.
As to colors, Golden makes a quality line of artists’ acrylics, and they have an online color mixer that I use frequently. Google “golden online color mixer” to bring it and related articles up. It can take some time, but I’ve used it to match railroad-specific colors by comparing swatches on a white index card.
Rick Krall
Scalecoat by Weaver Models has a line of railroad specific Acrylic paints called Scalecoat II. Google Scalecoat and you’ll get there.
Scalecoat II is not acrylic.
Thanks y’all for your help. This gives me several options to try as well as some carrying opinions of quality to weigh. Appreciate it!
I guess I have my information incorrect, I apologize to everyone who this may have mislead. I don’t know what type of paint it is and I can find nothing on Weavers website explaining the type of paints either of the two Scalecoat products are.
Maxman, if you positively know that it is not acrylic, can you tell all of us what type of paint Scalecoat II is, than?
Well, my can of Scalecoat II thinner says “contains Petroleum Distillate”. Bottle of Scalecoat II that I have in front of me says “contains Xylene, Benzene, Butatone Oxime, and Petroleum Distillates”. None of this sounds like acrylic to me.
Excellent, thanks for clarifying. Sometimes when you think you might be helping someone find a product to replace one that is being phased-out, it might pay to not make snap statements that you know nothing about! For some reason I tend to do this on occasions, sorry for that.
Scalecoat II is an enamel type paint, which means it is plastic compatable, it can be painted on plastics with out crazing as opposed to Scalcoat I which is laquer based and can craze plastics.
Scalecoat does make RR specific colors, but they are solvent based and not a direct substitute for water based acrylics. Personally, I don’t use solvent based paints. I don’t have to have a vented spray booth to vent the toxic fumes.
No. Scalecoat is not acrylic, it solvent based paint. Right now I believe that the only water based acrylics that have a wide variety of RR colors is ModelFlex by Badger. I use them and they’re great out of the bottle, but I’ve not had a lot of luck with brush painting them. However, I’ve tride brush painting them directly on plastic without a primer coat…maybe that will make a difference.
Wow,
Old thread from the dead for sure.
Any way, here’s a good cross reference substitution chart: https://www.microscale.com/Floquil%20Color%20Chart.pdf
Testors has replaced many of the colors like the blacks and aged concrete, but not any real railroad specific ones. I use model flex when I’m looking for a specific RR color.
https://www.testors.com/product-catalog/testors-brands/model-master/acrylic-paint/bottles
Vallejo and Citadel are readily available and are ten times better than Polly Scale ever was. They are also three times as expensive.
.
You can get any color you want, but the names are a bit wonky sounding.
.
-Kevin
.
Both Scalecoat I and Scalecoat II use the same solvent ingredients, but in different proportions. None of them are lacquer thinner, and according to the MSDS, the main ingredients are naptha and xylene (the latter a component of lacquer thinner).
Since the discontinuation of Pollyscale, I’ve switched to Scalecoat I, and have never had an issue using it on plastic, either airbrushed or brush-painted.
Of all the paints I’ve used over the last 60-plus years, I found Pollyscale to be the one I liked best: good coverage, fast-drying, durable on all materials, a wide range of available colours, easily thinned with water for airbrushing, and good coverage and self-levelling when brush painting. Also, very good shelf-life.
In my opinion, Testors would have been wiser to re-formulate their Model Master brand to the materials and standards used by RPM for Pollyscale. The only paint I buy from Testors nowadays is Dullcote and Glosscote.
A very good paint for airbrushing was SMP’s Accupaint, but for brush-painting, it was less useful.
The makers of the current crop of “airbrush-ready” paint assume that everybody uses an airbrush to paint everything, but I think that masking HO or N scale figures would become tiresome rather quickly. They also assume that we’d gladly pay the already over-inflated prices for bottles which contain less paint and more thinner, the latter often water or other cheap solvents. No thanks.
Wayne
Good grief. I was paying like $6/bottle when polyscale was around.
I have no quaroms with Polyscale. But it’s mostly all I ever used. It just worked.
Yup, old thread but an ongoing challenge.
I tried Vallejo myself but I was not super happy with their grimy black, and with the paint in general. It does not seem to stick on surfaces as well as the old Polly-scale paints did. I’m sure a good undercoat would make a difference.
I tried Rapido’s paint:
https://rapidotrains.com/proto-paint/
… And loved it. It is airbrush ready, which I know is a turn-off for many folks. I did try it with a brush and found that it still works OK for touch-ups.
Simon