I have an Overland Models Union Pacific business car and pulled it apart to install a dcc decoder for lighting. In the process a little bit of paint was “disturbed”. What is the best paint to use for touching up the factory paint? It is just a little bit on one portion of the underbody detail, and along the bottom edge of the car body.
Nothing very noticible, but you can see bare brass if the light hits it just right.
Thanks
I’d suggest a good quality natural bristle brush and some Scalecoat I paint.
You don’t mention the colors involved, but Scalecoat offers UP Yellow, New UP Yellow, UP Harbor Mist Gray, UP Dark Gray, UP Hopper Car Gray, and several versions of Black. They also have a wide range of other railroads’ colors, some of which may match those on your model.
Regardless of the colors or brand of paint you choose, you may not get an exact color match, and if you’re not comfortable trying to mix a more proper match, I’d suggest that you don’t worry about it too much.
After all, if the real car had suffered a similar minor mishap, with minimal damage to the paint, shop forces, no matter where or on whose railroad the car happened to be, would likely have touched things up as best they could, and sent it on its way.
The process would be similar, I think, to a yellow UP boxcar being accepted in interchange by CP Rail. A CP employee spots a damaged grabiron or a bent sill step, and sends the car to be repaired. The new part needs some paint, but there’s no UP Yellow to be had, so they slap-on some boxcar red, then send the car on its way. They also send UP a bill for parts and labour.
While a business car might merit the proper paint, they’re not going to leave it sitting on a siding somewhere, waiting for the exact right color to show up.
Wayne
Hi, Smitty
My personal choice would be Scalecoat I for doing a brush-paint touch up.
http://www.minutemanscalemodels.com/v/vspfiles/Colorchart/ScalecoatColorChart.pdf
Some brands of paint are “pre-thinned” for airbrush spray painting and would be too thin for brush work.
Others may have their suggestions, too.
Good Luck, Ed
Yeah, it would be just a tiny little bit of brush touch up. It just seems difficult to take it apart without a bit of paint damage. I would assume just prep with a small amount of alcohol.
I would rather damage the paint a little than get myself into a situation where I would have to swap out bulbs. The actual decoder intstall is a whole different situation, but I think we have that figured out. It is just really precarious having to pull one of these things apart.
brasstrains.com in it’s weekly series has a spot about painting a brass passenger train. To paraphrase Joe Biden, “it’s a big deal” [:D]
I prefer to use acrylics to avoid the fumes. For touch ups on brass, I use a brush and use a good quality primer first, also with a brush.
Thanks for the responses thus far. I completely forgot about Brass Trains as a resource!! I don’t think that primer should be needed (hopefully). These spots are really tiny, so I’m hoping that the touch up should adhere nicely to the surrounding paint. I’m beginning to second guess re-opening this car to install a decoder. I don’t want to monkey around too much with a car that cost me as much as this one did.
Well, it’s your car Smitty, but unless you drop it on the floor sometime during the decoder installation, and then step on it, I can’t see any reason why opening it again would do any more damage than it did on the first occasion.
In fact, now that you’re aware of what might occur, based on your original experience, I think that there’d be less chance of causing any damage.
Wayne