A Little Patch and Paint

No, I'm not selling or buying a house, just working on the All East. Now that I'm pretty sure all the roadbed is in place I started leveling it out. The guys at Railwire came to the rescue again and suggested Durham's Rock Hard Putty. It comes in a couple of sizes but only my favorite home center had the smaller can. Whipped up a batch by mixing in some water and smeared it on the spline at HOMER. There's more than a few yawning cavities in the area so it seemed a good place to try it out. First I sanded out the high spots. Only takes a light pressure on the sanding bar...

Passenger Spline at HOMER

I used that plastic spreader that I used to apply the Bondo at SLOPE. The plastic is soft which keeps the tool from tearing into the foam. I hold the thing almost perpendicular to the spline with very little downward pressure...

Spreading the Putty on the Spline

It took a couple of minutes to cover a two - three foot section. All I have to do now is wait for the stuff to dry and run the sanding bar over it...

Afterward, Waiting for Final Sanding

After 16 Hours and a Light Sanding

After 16 hours the putty isn't quite dry and I still have some voids to fill. Once I get this right I have only 100 or so feet to go. Piece of cake.

Waiting for some glue to dry somewhere I started experimenting with paint. Recently Testor announced it was cutting back production on their modeling paint. Among the first to go will be the Floquill and PolyScale lines, the railroad colors most of us use. I thought of stocking up on "Brunswick" Green, but A - It's costly ($6 a small bottle). B - It's especially costly if you stock up on it. C - I'd hate to stock up on paint and have it dry up or whatever in the bottles. Not sure of the shelf life and don't want to find out. I forgot D - My new local hobby shop doesn't have it. They have every other color, but no Brunswick Green. Weird.

Soooo...I went to said hobby shop, bought some of the Model Master paints for about $3.50 (1/2 ounce bottle) and tested them on a Bachmann locomotive shell I had destroyed. I tried a Model Master color called Schwartzgrun. It's German for Black Green. The "swatch" on the paint display looked dark, but it actually looked gray green in the bottle. I painted the cab and a short section of boiler hoping it would darken as it dried. Looks nothing at all like the swatch. I then tried some Aircraft Interior Black on the adjacent section of boiler. It's definitely darker, but more of a "warm" gray. The rest of the locomotive was previously painted Floquil "Brunswick" Green. It looks like flat black in the photo below...

Paint Test #1

I also painted the smokebox with Gunmetal Buffing Metalizer (about $4 or so a 1/2 ounce bottle). I then poured most of the bottle of Aircraft Interior Black into a empty bottle and added a pipette of Euro Dark Green. I painted another section of the boiler with this mixture and it turned out a warm gray with just the slightest green cast...

I'm not sure if it matches Dark Green Locomotive Enamel, but it's close enough for my tastes. I also experimented with some reds trying to match some PRR car colors. A few more coats are required...I should have cleaned the old paint off first...but the preliminary results are...

Model Master #2073 "Rot" RLM 23

I tried Model Master #2073 "Rot" RLM 23 as replacement for the red oxide I use on boxcars. The hopper I painted was originally Floquil Boxcar Red (I think). It looks like red oxide to me, but maybe a bit dark.

Next I tried FS 31136 Insignia Red on a Penn Central cabin car I need to "backdate" to Pennsy, 1949...

Model Master FS 31136 Insignia Red

Like I said, I should have removed the old paint first. I think the car was molded of plastic in that PC Green, so only the decals would be removed. Need to try again with more coats.

Finally, I tried Model Master #2009 British Crimson. This color reminds me of the Scalecoat "PRR Maroon" so I brushed it onto an SP passenger car (Daylight Colors) to see what color it dries to...

Model Master #2009 British Crimson

If you ask me the Insignia Red looks closer to Tuscan. Even with more coats, the crimson is too red. I think the Insignia Red looks pretty close to how I perceive tuscan red. I'll have to find a close match for the Boxcar Red I use on the cabin cars. As I said a long time ago, I'm not lookinng for an exact match, just close enough to the color that I can use consistently for each type of equipment. I feel that if all the boxcars or cabins or locomotives are the same shade it will look more realistic than a dozen shades of the same color.

That's about all I got done. Time with my grandson took up most of the week.

Regards

Frank Musick

Chief Cook and Bottle Washer

Allegheny Eastern Railroad