Brass Painting and DCC Install?

[Dave V]

So...this is one of those times where the "correct forum" isn't obvious!

Anyway, my folks are sending me my father's brass HOn3 model of Rio Grande Southern (former Florence & Cripple Creek) class T-19 4-6-0 #25.  She's unpainted and straight DC.  She hasn't turned a wheel on her own in at least 25 years, but as I recall she ran smoothly.  Pretty sure she's a Precision Scale loco.  I don't know what's inside mechanically but there's a description of the two versions PSC ran here:

http://www.roundbell.com/hon3conversions.html

Alas at the moment I don't know which run it is but I don't remember her being noisy, so I think she's first run (frame mounted brass idler gear and Sagami 1225).

My question to the collective and those in the know ( @peteski ?) is whether you have any recommendations on someone I could contract to paint her and covert her to DCC?  Ideally if she's to hold her own beside my stable of Blackstone gems, she should also have sound and perhaps even a keep-alive.  I know the cost will be anything but trivial, but at least the locomotive itself is essentially no cost...so I'm hoping to finance the upgrades by thinning my N scale herd further.

Any suggestions would be of great help.

Eventually I'd like to reproduce this train; the Barriger Special.  On this train were John Barriger and Victor Miller, inspector and receiver respectively, running over the length of the RGS to evaluate it for a Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan, in 1938.

[peteski]

So...this is one of those times where the "correct forum" isn't obvious!

My question to the collective and those in the know ( @peteski ?) is whether you have any recommendations on someone I could contract to paint her and covert her to DCC?  Ideally if she's to hold her own beside my stable of Blackstone gems, she should also have sound and perhaps even a keep-alive.  I know the cost will be anything but trivial, but at least the locomotive itself is essentially no cost...so I'm hoping to finance the upgrades by thinning my N scale herd further.

Any suggestions would be of great help.

That is a beautiful model Dave!  While I'm capable of custom painting and electronic installs there is no way I'm going to take up another project anytime soon. Besides, I don't touch the Horribly Oversize scale!       Just as a clarification - the last sentence was written in-jest. Just kidding!

As far as recommendations go, I am not really in the know to recommend custom painters or DCC installers. From what I see here @chicken45 does some excellent painting/weathering,  and I think that @woodone and few others here do DCC installs.  Sorry that I couldn't be more help.

[chicken45]

@peteski you are too kind. My airbrushing looks like crap compared to yours. When I saw that firetruck in person I came home and sold my airbrush. LOL.

Actually, Col. Broughton (@cbroughton67) is prob the one for this.
 
He's both cheap AND easy!

[Dave V]

That is a beautiful model Dave!  While I'm capable of custom painting and electronic installs there is no way I'm going to take up another project anytime soon. Besides, I don't touch the Horribly Oversize scale!       Just as a clarification - the last sentence was written in-jest. Just kidding!

As far as recommendations go, I am not really in the know to recommend custom painters or DCC installers. From what I see here @chicken45 does some excellent painting/weathering,  and I think that @woodone and few others here do DCC installs.  Sorry that I couldn't be more help.

No worries...I know your plate is full.  I just thought you might have a circle of like-skilled friends.  And LOL on the HO comment...  I used to think HOn3 locos were "tiny" but now I feel like I could run them out in the backyard!

Those T-19s were good lookers, weren't they?  Schenectady Locomotive Works, 1899, built for the mythical but ill-fated Florence & Cripple Creek Railway where she plied the narrow rails up Phantom Canyon beneath the southern summit of Pikes Peak.  Of the three that made it to the RGS, one survives...the famed #20.  She spent many decades stuffed and mounted at the Colorado Railroad Museum, but today her boiler sits atop a recently rebuilt frame at Strasburg, PA while a brand-new wooden T-19 cab was just yesterday delivered to Golden.  It's hoped that before long #20, sister to the 25, will join D&RGW class C-19 #346 and K-37 #491 in steam at the CRM.  Complicating the project has been the notoriously "temporary" repairs the RGS made to keep her running along with flat spots on her boiler and firebox from a wreck on Cima Hill in 1943...the same one that cost RGS C-19 #40 her life.

@peteski you are too kind. My airbrushing looks like crap compared to yours. When I saw that firetruck in person I came home and sold my airbrush. LOL.

Actually, Col. Broughton (@cbroughton67) is prob the one for this.
 
He's both cheap AND easy!

Ah, yes, but is he also a HOer?   

[chicken45]

Ah, yes, but is he also a HOer?   

The BIGGEST.

[peteski]

ROTFL!  I'm so glad that I beckoned (or is it baconed?) Josh into this thread. 

[peteski]

@peteski you are too kind. My airbrushing looks like crap compared to yours. When I saw that firetruck in person I came home and sold my airbrush. LOL.

You funny!
That was a simple single-color airbrush job (with a clear coat).    And no weathering - I suck at that!

[SandyEggoJake]

Sweet Ten-Wheeler and concept, Dave. 

Would that be John Barriger of the St.Lou Merc Lib fame?  Don't know all that much about him, but was very impressed by their collection.  Looking at many of his photos, I suspect you'll want to model him, camera in hand, sitting on the rear deck of his obv car.

[Mike C]

For DCC  and sound I recomend @woodone  Painting ? no idea ....

[SandyEggoJake]

@Dave V

FYI, given your train...

New book,"John W. Barriger III: Railroad Legend", by H Roger Grant, is to be published in Spring 2018 by Indiana University Press.

[Dave V]

She arrived today at my office:

[Mike C]

OOOOOOOHHHHH !!!!   I have a K27 , and ordered a C19 and a K28  . Is that a PFM ?

[Dave V]

OOOOOOOHHHHH !!!!   I have a K27 , and ordered a C19 and a K28  . Is that a PFM ?

No...  PSC.