Track Painting

One of my layout goals for this year was to paint the track, and I'm now about 95% of the way there with 2 months left in the year. Yesterday I was granted a large block of time to do what I pleased, and I seized the opportunity to lug the compressor and airbrush from the basement up to the attic and paint the track.

I used Vallejo Game Air Charred Brown (72.745) thinned about 4 parts paint to 1 part Vallejo airbrush thinner. It took 2-3 passes over each section to get a good coat, and I ended up going through almost 2 bottles of paint. To avoid getting paint in the electrical contacts at the point hinges, I didn't spray these areas and will come back later to brush paint them. It would have been really tedious to brush paint all of the rails even on this small layout, so the airbrush really saved the day here. In addition, it wouldn't have been feasible to use an aerosol can in the attic - too much overspray and fumes.

A scrap of 2x2 wrapped with paper towel was handy for wiping wet paint off of the rail tops.

Conspicuously unpainted in the first photo is the siding in the middle of the layout that will serve the feed mill. This was intentional, as it occurred to me recently that I should realign this track to be parallel to an adjacent street. I started laying out the streets earlier this year, and as shown on the photo below, with the current track arrangement the feed mill would end up in a triangular-shaped lot that would look unusual in context. 

It shouldn't be too difficult to realign the siding, other than now I'm wishing that I hadn't soldered the rail joints. 

Bev-Bel TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

 Over the years I've acquired four of the Bev-Bel/Athearn TP&W Pullman-Standard covered hoppers: one each of the yellow and gray and two of the red. These cars have remained unbuilt because I've lacked a good way to paint the underbodies, slope sheets, and brake gear - which are all unpainted black plastic - in colors that match the rest of the car. Now that I have an airbrush, I can finally paint the unpainted parts in matching colors and build these cars.

This project seemed like a good choice for a novice airbrusher - all of the parts to be painted are somewhat concealed on the finished model - and I'd also get some experience with attempting to match factory paint. This project was also my first experience with Vallejo Model Air paint. I have a strong preference for water-based paints and, thanks to Testor's, there aren't many water-based model paints besides Vallejo left on the market. 

TP&W 18140 (gray)

I started with the gray car back in April. To my eye, the following paint mix is an excellent match for the Bev-Bel gray:

• 1 part 71.046 Pale Blue Grey
• 1 part 71.276 USAF Light Gray

I thinned the mix 4:1 with Vallejo airbrush thinner and had good results spraying at about 25 psi. I sprayed the paint directly onto the black plastic and I was pleased to get a smooth, opaque coat. I was not pleased, however, at how easily the dried paint flaked off. The minimal handling required to remove the parts from my painting handles and finish assembly of the car resulted in the paint chipping off in several places. It wasn't a big deal to touch up these spots with a brush, but this experience did make me nervous about future projects where I'll want to do multi-color paint schemes with masking. I always wash plastic parts with soap and water prior to painting and don't handle them with my bare hands after washing, so I don't think the issue here was that dirty parts affected the paint adhesion.

TP&W 18102 (yellow)

In July, I moved on to the yellow car. Knowing that the yellow paint wouldn't cover the black plastic very well, I planned to do a white undercoat. My original plan was to just use white Model Air (71.001), but following the gray paint flaking experience and more time spent reading Vallejo's instructions, I decided to use a white primer instead. I used Vallejo Mecha Color white primer (70.640) because that's what my hobby shop had in stock. I didn't thin the primer because Vallejo cautions that thinning their primers degrades some of their qualities, but I had to crank up the air pressure to almost 40 psi to get it to spray well. 

I had a much harder time matching the yellow paint than I did the gray. I initially thought that a 1:1 mix of 71.033 Yellow Ochre and 71.078 Yellow would work, but upon closer comparison to the Bev-Bel paint my mix wasn't "golden" enough. There are very few yellow options in the Model Air line, but fortunately the Vallejo Game Air line has some golden yellows and these paints can be mixed with Model Air. The following mix is the best I could come up with for the Bev-Bel yellow:

• 2 parts 71.033 Model Air Yellow Ochre
• 1 part 71.078 Model Air Yellow
• 1 part 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow

As expected the yellow went on rather transparent and required multiple coats to get an opaque finish. The yellow paint over primer combination produced a much more durable finish than the gray paint directly on plastic, so I will plan to always prime bare plastic before painting with Model Air in the future.

TP&W 18175 (red #1)

I painted the two red cars in October. I painted both of them at the same time but one of them required renumbering so I'll write about that one in a separate post. I used Vallejo's Grey Surface Primer (74.601) on the bare plastic. As with the Mecha Primer, I didn't thin it and had to spray at about 40 psi. The red proved even more difficult to match than the yellow. My method of color matching - brush-painting small patches of various test mixes on the insides of the shell - didn't work very well because the reds are very transparent. The red colors also seemed to get darker as they dried, which further complicated matters. After a good deal of experimenting, the best match I could come up with was:

• 4 parts 71.003 Red
• 1 part 71.086 Light Red

This mix looked too orange when I first sprayed it onto the model, but it got redder as it dried and I was pleased with the final result.

Stay tuned for a future post about how I renumbered the second of the red hoppers.

Legacy Building Update

It's been about 4 months since my last post, so it's about time for a new one. My Legacy Building kitbash is coming along, and the south wall of the building is almost complete.

This has been a good project to work on for 30 minutes here or an hour there. My razor saw has really gotten a workout to this point. This wall was challenging because of how I had to merge wall sections from the two kits together, especially with the way they overlap on the first floor. The left side is the front wall from the Walthers Magnolia Hotel kit with the third floor removed and additional height added to the first-floor storefront. The extra height was necessary so I had enough room to add the basement windows on the right side, which is composed of the two short second-floor walls with arched windows from the DPM Other Corner Cafe kit. The basement windows themselves came from one of the back walls of the cafe. 

Still on the to-do list for this wall are blanking out most of the windows, building the main entry door, and finishing the cornice. The latter has had me stumped a bit because I didn't have a great picture of the cornice from the 1970s and it has since been removed from the building so recent pictures don't show it. While looking through old magazines in my collection a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a pretty good picture of the cornice from 1979 in the May-June 1987 issue of Prototype Modeler. Incidentally, I plan on modeling TP&W 700 in this paint scheme.

The scan quality above isn't so great, but on the original magazine image the raised lettering on the center of the cornice is legible and reads "City Opera House." There's also a picture from 1895 that shows this on the Legacy Building's web site. I'll try to find some small plastic letters so I can add this detail to the model. 

Legacy Building Kitbash - Part I

The diamond in downtown El Paso, IL where the TP&W crossed the Illinois Central's Charter (aka, Gruber) line will be a feature scene on my layout. Luckily for me, this was a popular photo spot for railfans in my era so many good images are available, like Lloyd Rinehart's excellent cover shot from the July 1983 issue of Railfan & Railroad:

The distinctive corner building that I circled on the cover scan is called the Legacy Building. It still stands today, though it has been restored to a natural brick color and much of the decorative cornice has been removed.

The Legacy Building in 2019 (Google Street View image)

I want to include a model of the 1970s-era Legacy Building on my layout. My goal is to kitbash a reasonable facsimile from readily-available kits rather than scratchbuild an exact model. Perhaps the most challenging part of this project will be reining in my eye for detail and accepting compromises that will be "good enough."

After a thorough review of HO scale kits for "Main Street" buildings, I settled on the Walthers Magnolia Hotel (discontinued, but still available on the secondary market) for the western part of the structure and the Design Preservation Models Other Corner Cafe for the eastern part on the corner. 

I chose the Magnolia Hotel primarily for its peaked cornice. The Walthers kit is for a 3-story building, so I'll have to remove one of the upper floors.

There weren't many options for buildings with arched windows like the prototype. The Other Corner Cafe seemed like my best bet, though its windows have prominent lintels that will have to be carved off. I'll have to use two Other Corner Cafe kits to get the arched windows on both the first and second floors. Also, the stock kit assembles into a building for a mirror image to the prototype corner, but that won't matter because I'll be doing so much cutting and splicing anyway.

I couldn't find a kit with a corner turret that looked anything like the prototype, so I will have to scratchbuild that part.

It's been a long time since I've built a structure, so I'm excited to start this project. 

Airbrushing Setup

Until now, I haven't felt like I needed an airbrush. I've been satisfied with the results I've achieved by using aerosol cans for locomotives and rolling stock and brush painting for structures and vehicles. Near the end of last summer I had started putting together a shopping list of Scalecoat II spray cans for planned projects, and at $11.95/can plus shipping the cost added up pretty fast when estimating 1 can per 2 models based on past experience. It occurred to me that if I was going to spend $100+ on paint, I might as well invest in an airbrush because it would give me a lot more flexibility. So I spent most of my hobby time last October-December getting set up for airbrushing. 

The Airbrush

For my first airbrush I wanted one that was simple to use and easy to clean. As a total beginner to airbrushing, I felt I would do better learning with a single-action airbrush because the paint output is preset and the trigger is simply on/off. I felt like repeatability would be a challenge with a double-action airbrush where moving the trigger also adjusts the paint flow. I ended up choosing the Badger 350, a single-action, external-mix airbrush. I went with external vs. internal mix for ease of cleaning.

The Compressor

I wanted an air compressor that I could use for airbrushing as well as for other things around the house, namely topping off car tires. I purchased the WEN 1-gallon compressor, and so far I like it a lot. The noise level is similar to a vacuum cleaner and it's very compact and easy to move around.

The Spray Booth

I elected to build my own spray booth both for cost-effectiveness and because I thought I would have fun doing it. While online examples of ultra low-cost spray booths made from plastic bins and bathroom fans appealed to my miserly tendencies, a spray booth is a piece of safety equipment and it's not a good idea to cut corners on safety. The booth I built ended up costing about $250, certainly not cheap but less expensive than commercially-available booths of comparable specifications. And I did enjoy building it too.

My spray booth is mostly based on the Vent Works DIY spray booth, although I also used two old Model Railroader articles as resources: 

• "A deluxe spray paint booth" by Ken Breher, August 1983 issue, pages 103-105
• "The Paint Shop spray booth" by Andy Sperandeo, January 1988 issue, pages 128-135

While my layout and the desk I use as my modeling workbench are both in our attic and I considered putting the spray booth up there too, I ultimately decided the best place for it was in the basement. Painting can be messy and spills would be much less of a problem in the basement, not to mention the fact that there's a utility sink nearby in the basement but no sink at all in the attic. While the compressor I chose is relatively quiet, it is not silent and in the basement it's much less likely to disturb sleeping children on the second floor of the house. 

I had to make my booth a couple of inches shallower than the Vent Works design to fit my space and I also adjusted the angle of the fan mount panel so that I could run the exhaust duct to the nearby window with only one bend in it. The Vent Works design specifies a Plexigas top panel to let in light, but my basement lighting is poor so I opted to use a wood top panel and mount an under-cabinet light fixture inside. I used the Dayton 6FHX9/70633277 blower, which accounted for nearly half the cost of the booth, and also purchased the Vent Works duct adaptor to make construction a bit easier.

Our basement has glass block windows, and I built the spray booth near one of the vented ones. When it's time to paint, I remove the hinged window and replace it with this duct outlet panel made from a piece of 1/4" plywood and a 4"-diameter duct starting collar. The perimeter of the outside of the panel is lined with foam weather stripping and a simple latch made from a piece of 0.060" sheet styrene secures it in the window opening. When I'm done painting, I disconnect the duct, remove the outlet panel, and restore the window to its original configuration.

I'm pleased with the results of this project and am looking forward to using it.

Accurail TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

Accurail released kits for TP&W Pullman-Standard 4,750 cubic-foot covered hoppers in 2019. These kits represent cars from a series of 30 built in February 1974 and numbered 18151-18180. The Accurail car is only available in one number, 18164, but a decal set of additional numbers is available from Accurail. I purchased 3 of these cars and the decal set soon after they became available.

After assembling one of the kits in January of this year (pictured above), I'd have to say that I was a bit disappointed overall. The finished car looks good detail-wise and the lettering is good, but its maroon color is too dark compared to the prototype cars, which were painted the same red-orange as other 1970s-era TP&W equipment. In addition, assembly was quite a bit more difficult than other Accurail cars, though to be fair covered hoppers are much more complex than boxcars. I wasn't too eager to assemble the other two kits after my experience with the first one so I waited several months until now. I learned from my mistakes the first time around and things went more smoothly this time.

Coupler Height

The cars come with scale 33"-diameter wheels, while the prototype cars have 36"-diameter wheels. Replacing the stock wheels with scale 36" wheels is trivial; however, the coupler height was borderline too high with the 33" wheels so using the larger wheels would make the coupler height even worse. Initially I decided to live with 33" wheels on TP&W 18164. 3 inches in HO scale is only about 1/32 inch in 1:1 scale and I didn't think the difference would be very noticeable, but my eyes weren't fooled. 

33"-diameter wheels on TP&W 18164 (left) and 36"-diameter wheels on ITC 1735 (right)

It's typically much easier to shim up cars to correct low couplers than it is to lower couplers that are too high, but luckily the Accurail coupler box design makes it easy to add a shim above the coupler to lower it. I made my shims out of 0.010"-thick styrene and attached them to the underframe with double-sided tape as shown below. I drilled a #43 hole in each shim to clear the coupler box screw.

The coupler boxes fit too tightly over the underframe and require filing/scraping of their inside edges. The instructions do warn that some paint may need to be scraped off of the coupler boxes to ensure a proper fit, but I found that I needed to remove some plastic too.

Here's the 18164 with 36" wheels and no coupler shim. Coupler is too high. 

With the coupler shim in place, now the coupler height is perfect.

Bolsters

On most HO scale freight cars, the bolsters to which the trucks are mounted are cast into the underframe or floor. On the Accurail PS 4750 as shown below, the bolsters are separate pieces that must be attached to the underframe.

The separate bolsters wouldn't be a bad thing if it weren't so easy to mount them off-kilter. I found this out the hard way when I assembled the first kit back in January. I managed to attach one of the bolsters a bit crooked, and the car simply wouldn't stay on the track on its inaugural run on the layout. I was glad I had used cyanoacrylate glue to attach the bolsters, so it wasn't difficult to pop off the bad one and try again. In my opinion, the bolster pieces could be substantially improved by adding raised tabs on their top sides that key into the underframe and ensure proper alignment.

When I assembled the other two kits, I used a #50 drill bit as a guide to ensure that the hole in the bolster piece was aligned with the hole in the underframe. Slow-setting cyanoacrylate gel allows enough working time to tweak the alignment. This time around I had no issues with bolster alignment.

Renumbering

The image below shows the contents of Accurail's renumbering decal set for these cars. The large numbers are for the car sides and the small numbers are for the ends.

I decided to renumber my cars to 18162 and 18167 so I would only have to change one digit on the car sides. Most Accurail cars have a very flat finish that does not promote decal adhesion. The finish on these covered hoppers has a bit more of a sheen than other Accurail cars, but I still thought a gloss coat would be a good idea. I applied masking tape to all but the immediate areas around the numbers and gave the cars a couple of light coats of Testor's Glosscote from a spray can. The masking was tedious and felt like overkill, but I haven't forgotten that I once ruined the finish on an entire locomotive with a bad can of Glosscote when I only needed to coat a couple of small areas, so the masking is insurance against that happening again.

My original plan was to apply the decals with the masking still in place so I wouldn't have to mask again for the final flat finish, but I didn't leave myself much room to maneuver the decals and the tape soaked up the decal setting solutions so I had to remove some of the tape right around the numbers. 

On the car sides I only applied "2" and "7" decals over the "4". Because the numbers on the ends are much smaller, I applied decals for the full car numbers over the factory-printed number. Experience with these Accurail decals has taught me to use fresh knife blades and make many light passes when cutting out the numbers to prevent flaking paint and jagged edges. For setting solution, I used Microscale Micro Sol. Once the decals were dry, I re-masked around them and sealed them with a couple of light coats of Testor's Dullcote.

The decal numbers aren't as opaque white as the factory-printed numbers, but you have to look closely to notice this. The finished cars are shown below.

Miscellaneous Freight Cars

My hobby time over the past month has been spent on several small freight car projects. I'm whittling down my stockpile of unbuilt kits and making minor improvements to other cars in the fleet.

ITC 8427 is an Accurail car that's been in my fleet for a long time. After seeing a builder's photo of a prototype car from this series, I removed the running board and painted the trucks red. I also swapped out the black underbody and brake gear that came with this car with a red underbody from another Accurail PS-1 in my fleet. 

ITC 3843 is an MDC Roundhouse gondola that has also been in my fleet for many years. The red trucks on 1970s-era ITC freight cars were striking and unique, so this car's trucks got painted at the same time I did the 8427's trucks.  

Formerly an identical twin, but now a fraternal one. I have two of these Accurail Rock Island ACF Center Flow covered hoppers, but both were numbered 800365. For this car, I took advantage of Accurail's renumbering decals for the first time. At the same time they produce a car, Accurail paints a small sheet of decal paper with matching paint and prints several additional car numbers on it. I learned the hard way on the ends of this car to trim the new numbers very close to the lettering because the decal edges are difficult to hide even though they're painted the same color as the rest of the car. The sides turned out ok.

This Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern boxcar is an Athearn Blue Box kit that's been in my stash for a couple of years. I didn't make any changes to the car body, though I did rebuild the underframe to correct the low coupler height and move the coupler boxes a bit farther out from the ends. I don't know how often MNS cars were seen on the TP&W, maybe never, but I like this car as a shout out to places I used to live.

The Peoria & Eastern was a direct competitor to the TP&W, but I have a soft spot for obscure railroads of central Illinois. This Branchline Trains kit waited almost 10 years for me to finally assemble it. Prior bad experiences with Branchline Trains kits made me somewhat hesitant to start working on this one. These kits have lots of very delicate plastic parts that are challenging to install, don't fit particularly well in the mounting holes, have casting flash in inconvenient locations, and are usually molded in a very different color of plastic than they are painted so the sprue marks are very obvious. Assembly of this car went relatively smoothly and touch-up of the many black parts was easy, but this will probably be the last Branchline Trains kit I build.