Narrow gauge diesel repainted

With the paint off and a coat of etching primer on, the repainting process was pretty straightforward. First, a coat of matt yellow went on and when this was properly dry, it was masked off to leave the stripe and buffer beams. Humbrol 64 is a pretty good match for the main colour, as was the primer ironically.

Window frames are silver, carefully brush painted followed by black wipers, handrails and footplate. The spotlight lenses are gunmetal to represent an unlit light.

The stripes on the buffer beams were carefully marked out in pencil and then drawn in with a bow pen. Between these lines I filled in by brush. Then spent ages fiddling to get things properly spaced. I'd have loved to find some transfers but the lifting lugs were in the way. The footplate colour extends up the body slightly and this was easily achieved with the bow pen again.

Finally the whole lot got a shot of satin varnish to unify the sheen's and bring the colours alive.

The chassis painting was all by brush. It worked well so I had no intention of taking it to bits for spraying !

The results look nice. Much better than the green and quite a lot more modern too.

Grit blasting

I wasn't really happy with the work of the paint stripper so decided to dig out the Badger sand blasting set to see if this could shift the stubborn stuff out of the crevices and difficult to scrape areas on the locomotive. Out came the big compressor and the gun, along with a plastic crate to act as a blasting cabinet.

On when the gloves, dust mask and off I went, blasting most of my supply of aluminium oxide onto the model.

Did it work ? Errr, not really. The brass was affected in a way that will key it and enable to paint to stick well but that paint already on the model stayed pretty much where it was. Occasionally I managed to get a bit of an effect but not often. I'd anticipated blowing the paint off with ease but was constantly frustrated. It might be that my oxide wasn't in the best condition - it isn't a new tub and I'm not sure how often it has been through the gun, perhaps the grain corners have been blown off through being battered against metal model railway engines.

With equipment out I though I'd have a crack at some soda blasting. It's popular in the classic car world as despite being as messy as sandblasting, the mess can be washed away with water and doesn't harm the environment. The action is less harmful to the, metal than the sand version. I loaded the gun with baking soda and tried it out. Result, rubbish. Perhaps the stuff wasn't sharp enough (again) and different brands, especially ones not out of their sell by date, would work better.

Whatever I use, this is a horribly messy job as I don't have acess to a proper blasting cabinet. Even working in a crate I had to keep stopping to brush blasting media off everything, out of my hair and clothes. Don't do it in your best suit is my advice.

Paint stripping

After checking the locomotive over, I removed the only plastic items (window glazing) from the body. This allows me to use a "man sized" paint stripper rather than some of that watery stuff that you get for stripping plastic. My choice was Nitromors finest and the model was soon liberally coated in the stuff. For some reason I couldn't help thinking that the stuff looked very much like wallpaper paste. OK, it smells different and you wouldn't want to splash it on the walls but apart from that...

Anyway, after a few minutes the paint reacted and I started working it off with an old toothbrush. The paint seemed to have a good hold and it took a lot of work to get the results you see in the picture. I suspect that there are better strippers out there for this job as your domestic varieties have been neutered to cater for a market stupid enough to stick the stuff up their nose and then moan, "It hurts".

Once dry, a fair bit more of the paint could be picked off with a scalpel blade as the stripper had loosened it from the metal. I spent rather longer on this than expected and then had a better idea.

Nitromors data sheets can be downloaded from here.

Narrow Gauge loco repaint

Paul said to me, "I've got this loco but I don't like the colour. Can you repaint it like the Ffestiniog loco ?"

The model in question is a O16.5 Chivers etched kit for Herlech Castle. It had been put together OK but the green paint didn't make it stand out amongst a thousand other similar models. Mind you, I'd probably have painted it exactly the same colour as green seems to be the British Standard for industrial equipment !

Anyway, a quick web search enabled me to find a nice shot of the prototype engine in its fetching grey with a yellow stripe livery. And wasp strip buffers - rats, I hate doing those.

Anyway, the first job will be to strip the model back to bare metal and then dig out the airbrush for what I hope is a quickie job.