Undecorated Custom Paint Jobs

I am thinking of getting an undecorated Atlas RS32 or RS36 and doing a yet undecided custom paint job for my fictional short line. I have a few designs/ color schemes in my head but I wanted to see what kind of customer paint jobs you have done, so if you have a pic, please post it. (it does not have to be RS32/36)

This is my trolley line.

The trolley is a Bachmann Peter Witt model. I bought it undecorated. I don’t have an airbrush, so I did this with rattle-can sprays. I printed my own decals. One thing I’d strongly recommend is choosing a color scheme where you use dark-colored letters and logos on a light background.

You can see some of my projects by clicking on the photo link in my signature below.

Nice Looking Job Mr Beasley [tup]

WRS Units

LVRC(yellow) and WRS(black) ALCos

Pan Am 307

CCCR 105

The herald is actually a rectangle, not sure why it looks kinda off-kilter in the pic. Scheme is somewhat based on a c.1948 Baldwin diesel demonstrator paint scheme.

Could be the pic is in focus, it’s my layout that’s a little fuzzy…[swg]

Here are two of mine. Both are simple, solid colors with striping and decals added. Both are painted with model paint from a spray can.

This is a model made from a P2K undecorated GP30. It is not a fictional shortline but is of a real locomotive that works the Conrad Yelvington facility at Sanford, Fl.

THANK YOU! I’ve been dieing to know what it looked like.

Unfortunately, all I have on me myself is DLMX 231. This is a Spectrum F40PH representing an F40 purchased by the Friends of the 4449. Eventually, it will be their own Dynamic locomotiver and HEP power engine. The paintlines are crisp, but I had fits with the decal stripes. Thanks to the silver’s sagging like bunting, you can see the split between the red and the orange. I’m half tempted to just scrape 'em off and do the colors justice. Otherwise I’m pleased as punch.

Here’s the trick to the 2colors paints. Stripe first, then mask it off and paint the maincoat. In my case, the shel started out Model Master (rattlecan) Competition Orange, and then was followed up with a forgotten red. (Also a rattle) Tamyia sells narrow masking tape sizes on a self-applicating roller, that are just perfect for carbody and coach-window stripe widths. Then Glosscote, decal stripes and lettering, Dullcoate, and she’s all yours.

By the way, you mentioned designs in your head, take a look at www.painshop.railfan.net. There’s plenty of templates to do colors on. Be sure to give credit where do for the creators, don’t sell them, etc. The designs are white with black lines, can be colored in MS Paint, and are copyrighted. However, m

I’ve always started with the lightest color first, and then going on top of that consecutively with the darker colors.

A simple scheme for a switcher: . Regards Jon

Ideally, yes, that’s the way to do it. However, for ease of practicality, I prefer to work in the stripes. For me, this is less tape to screw up, and genrally, all the stripe patterrns are in the middle, on flatter surfaces than the roofedges. And an MRR article will back me up on this, though I can;t give you the issue right now.

Okay, here’s a couple from me. First, two locomotives that the prototype never owned:

Both painted with rattle can spray paint bought at a big box store. (I think the black paint cost 97 cents)

This is just decals on an undecorated black shell. It represents a possible evolution of the paint scheme had the original railroad survived another fifteen years or so

Seems to have a Norfolk-Southerny-like cleanness. I could also see it evolving into a NS/CSX hybrid on later generations.

WT roster

Wolfgang

mononguy63 - That reverse paint scheme looks pretty darn good, to be truthfull. [tup]

Eric97123 - Another possible option is to go ahead and buy decorated engines, and “brand” over them with your shortline’s letters. There are dozens of little shortlines across the U.S. with a collection of first generation fleets. Two of my favorites are the GREAT WALTON in Georgia, and the SOUTH BRANCH VALLEY in West Virginia. If your “shop forces” are particularly fond of RS’s, then you can “buy” up these dinosaurs from lines all over. Should make for colorfull lash-ups.

One good source is to look at how the real builders (particularly EMD) designed paint schemes for railroads. As I mentioned earlier, my free-lance paint scheme is based in large part on a Baldwin demonstrator paint scheme, I also use a later “simplified” version that’s pretty close to an FM demonstrator scheme.

There were many general themes that were used over and over again. One EMD trademark would be a stripe about 3/4ths of the way up on a switcher or GP/SD type road switcher for example. Sometimes the engine would be all one color, with a contrasting stripe. Sometimes the stripe would delineate the separation of two colors…dark green above the stripe, light green below the stripe, with the stripe being yellow or white for example. If you look around online or flea markets, Railfan and Railroad did a two-part story on EMD paint designs back about 25 years ago.

Virnex makes a line of “no need to trim” decal stripes and shapes (rectangles, ovals etc. for heralds) that are a lot easier to use than trying to paint a stripe. I use their gold stripes on my engines and their red rectangles as backgrounds for my otherwise white-on-clear heralds.

Just recently, I tried using decals to make stripes. In this case, it was for the pillars in this subway station:

I got much better results from the decals than I did trying to paint these lines. The decals were printed on my computer with an ink-jet, by the way.

I have Russell Rail as my custom with BNSF as my main carrier in. Its nothing fancy but it does get some looks from time to time.

My custom paint JOB, but not custom design—

Atlas RS-3 stock number 4201 stripped, detailed and painted as ATSF Zebra-stripe using Microscale decale zebra stripes and a metallic striping tape.