Side Tracked for a Friend - A Pair of Quick Afternoon Projects

A week or so ago a friend came over and we worked on a couple of his engines.  Basically a little finishing work and completing the customization of the models for his desires.

Who's up for an afternoon "Shot-gun Wedding" of detail parts and paint?

I took a few photos along the journey to adjust the details and paint on these two models.  I'm mostly wanting to show these as examples of skills and techniques.

A Shot-gun Stack Change

The second of my friend's engines that needed a bit of work was a Westside Models TW-8 getting a "shotgun" stack.  The model had already received a bunch of work, but needed the shotgun stack, which didn't get done.  So this isn't too hard of a detail to change as I'll show below.

The first step on this engine was removing a bit of the smokebox's graphite paint so the resistance soldering iron could make contact with the brass.

Fiberglass bristle brush. - Use this outside, so the spent fiberglass shards don't get into your food or body.

I used a fiberglass brush to do this on the front and rear of the stack.  I do not subscribe to the belief that an engine has to be "completely stripped and repainted" to make certain detail changes.  As I found with the SP 3266, which I installed a clam-shell stack onto the painted model with minimal cleaning of the smokebox paint, which was then touched up after.

Stack removed, some minor paint removal is seen from the fiberglass brush in front and behind the stack base.

In this case, the stack came off really easily.  The replacement stack required cutting off the molding gate with one of my saws.  Then I pre-tinned the underside of the shotgun stack with flux and rosin solder.

Sadly, I didn't grab very many photos of the SP 2919 during the work.

Finished up with matched 'high-temp' graphite coating.

The new stack on SP 2919 took about three or four attempts to get it square and straight, but it ended up being not too bad to get set up.  I then washed the stack with alcohol to clean off the residue of the flux or oils from the raw casting.

The Graphite color on the smoke box was matched pretty well with acrylic ATSF Silver and black, plus a little gray to make a custom color.  I tested this with a micro brush onto the existing graphite.  Then painted the stack and the cleaned areas of the top of the smokebox with the microbrush.  The inside of the stack was then painted with straight black.

SP 1277 - Red Roof

SP 1278 Passenger Switcher - Eddie Sims Collection

The desired scheme wasn't going all the way to having a green/blue "Russian Iron" boiler and cylinder jackets, but to pull the red cab roof.  I should probably classify this as a "What If Scheme"... What if the 1277 had the green/blue boiler jacketing repainted black, but kept the red roof.

This was from some of my dabbling of mocking-up a proto-freelance 2-6-0 using various MDC/Roundhouse parts.

I'm only putting this in here to show what a "painted Green Boiler" scheme would look like.  I at one point was going to do an MDC 0-6-0 as SP 1276, which I did a green boiler and red roof on.

First the Gray

This model started dressed in the basic black with red window trim and injector/check valves, etc.  

Tamyia tape used to mask off the edges and then blue-tapped to protect the black paint.

This was a rather quick masking job.  Any bleed-through around the masking tape will be easily touched up with black after the red roof is done.

Another view showing the M.B. Austin riveted roof.

The red won't want to cover very well over black, so I used a light gray base-coat to prep before the red.  In this case I also airbrushed the gray heavier away from the rivet lines.  Some modelers call this 'pre-shading' or 'pre-weathering' while you're painting the model.  It ended up not really being needed, as the contrast of the gray ended up being more uniform and the red coat covered the variations in the gray.

And the Red

Rearward view of the roof with masking.

I used ATSF Warbonnet Red, as I didn't have a set of SP Signal Red, which I suspect was what the 'green boilered' engines used.

Front view of the painted and masked engine.

My friend didn't want any weathering on the red.  I also was considering, if this was my engine, to do a light weathering with soot along the rivet rows.  So I went ahead and made the red paint coat more evenly covering than I might have on my own engine.

De-masked SP 1277 with the bright red cab roof.  The Warbonnet Red matched well with the other red trim on the model.

The engine de-masked pretty well.  However, there was a small bit of red roof color pealed with the sunshade's masking tape.  I was able to touch this up with a small Tamyia detail micro-brush.  There was also some small over-spray that happened along the front wall of the cab and forward of the sunshades where the masking didn't really snug down tight enough.

Wrapping Up the 1277

With the 85+F days starting, I'm able to let the engine dry in the sun for about 90 minutes to help the lacquer paint dry.  I also suggested my friend not keep the engine in the box for a week or so to fully let it 'gas off' before letting any of the box plastic wrap be in close contact with the 'fresh' painted roof.

Wrapping up the engine.

I was able to go back in and touch up the black where there was some red over-spray.  One of the arched rear cab roof supports was hit pretty badly with red over-spray too, but that was very easy to retouch with the black.

In Closing

That does it for this quick update post.  

Completed M.B. Austin 0-6-0 with red roof.

In February, after nearly a year, I finally started feeling better from the steroid injection in my hand from a the 1st quarter of 2024.  Then two weeks later the whole family came down sick.  We've mostly recovered, but some lingering effects over the last two months, which has kept me busy.

Some of the last work on the layout in Sept 2024, before the SPHTS Convention in Sparks in October.

I'm looking forward to getting back to some other projects again soon.  The layout hasn't seen much work in nearly two years, but I'm looking forward to catching up on the last two years of projects!

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Modeling SP 3266 (Part 2) - More History & Installing Clam-Shell Smoke Stack - Using the resistance soldering iron to solder a new clam-shell stack onto an old Balboa MK-5/6-class engine.