This Fantasy Pennsy Modern EMD Diesel Engines project is finally almost done. 16 modern diesels in two different Pennsy fantasy paint schemes for a customer.
What I thought would be a fairly easy one-color paint project turned into a much more complex job because I had no specific references for these modern EMD locomotives to go by, soooo...I had to design my own version of how maybe Pennsy would have painted them if that railroad still existed today.
Then, I had to change from Scalecoat II to a different brand of model railroad paint because my "stash" of Scalecoat II only includes UP & SP colors...not Pennsy. I decided to go with Tru-Color Paint because of the good things I've heard about the product, but that involved doing some online research into how to most effectively use the paint for model railroading.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting information about how to use Tru-Color Paint, including instructions from the manufacturer themselves which conflicted with my years of experience of both artistic and model related use of the airbrush.
Lots of modelers are thinning Tru-Color Paint with pure Acetone since the bottle is labeled "Contains: Acetone", but there were cautionary references about using pure Acetone for thinning the paint because it causes it to dry too quickly, sometime producing either orange-peel or granular, sandpaper-like paint surfaces since the paint is drying out before it hits the model's surface, not allowing the paint to level.
So, even though Tru-Color Paint Thinner is expensive, I bit the bullet and bought a 16oz bottle of it for around 45 bucks because I didn't want potential trouble to arise from using pure Acetone to thin the paint for my airbrush. I would stick with using Acetone for cleanup only...and it works great for that.
After disassembling all 16 Kato EMD SD70ACe's and EMD SD70M's, stripping the Norfolk Southern factory paint off of them, washing and degreasing the parts that I would be painting, letting them air dry overnight and handling them only with fresh Nitrile gloves, I used the drying time to experiment with how much to thin the Tru-Color Pennsy Brunswick Green and Pennsy Passenger Car Maroon paint, using my supply of white plastic spoons to spray with my Paasche VL #3 airbrush to get the thinner-to-paint-ratio correct.
Tru-Color Paint, in their videos say that their paint can be used straight from the bottle in your airbrush...and recommends what I consider to be a much too high air pressure of 28 to 30 psi. This, IMO is much too high, even for my Paasche VL #3's relatively large tip. After opening up the new bottles of paint I bought from my LHS, the paint is much too thick to go directly from the bottle through my airbrush, so by painting my plastic spoon test surfaces, I settled on 2/3rds paint and 1/3 thinner as what worked well...with a consistency of whole milk.
I noticed that when spraying the super smooth finish of the bare plastic spoons, the paint looks initially like it's going on with an inconsistent finish...sorta rough and smooth at the same time. However, after letting it sit and dry for about five to ten minutes, it evens out to a super-smooth medium glossy finish...not super glossy, but glossy enough to be ideal for applying decals. I used my usual air pressure of 15 to 18 psi and held my airbrush's tip 6 to 8 inches from what I was spraying.
I used these parameters to spray all 16 diesels' parts and was very impressed with the excellent quality of the thinned Tru-Color Paint. I was also pleasantly surprised at how quickly it dried...about 30 minutes at normal room temperature and it could be handled without any fear of finger printing or stickiness or denting. Excellent.
Cleanup is a breeze with pure Acetone so as not to waste the expensive Thinner, and my airbrush cleaned up nice and shiny with no residual paint residue.
The Microscale decals I got for the project turned out to be brittle, so decaling was a royal PITA, and I had to use up to five applications of Micro-Sol to get them to settle into the cracks and crannies. This left "watermarks" on the gloss paint finish that I couldn't remove with either distilled water or Windex...so, I hoped that my sealer coat of Tru-Color Satin finish would eliminate them.
After the decaling was finished, I degreased the parts with Bestine Rubber Cement Thinner (Heptane) by using a fairly big artist's paintbrush to apply a generous amount to each of the parts while holding them with my fresh Nitrile gloves on.
When I opened the Satin finish bottles, I noticed that they were only about a third full, and the paint had a consistency of cold maple syrup. Using my painted plastic spoons as my test surfaces, I found that I had to thin the Satin finish a bit over 50% with Tru-Color Thinner...and once again, the paint went on with an uneven looking surface, but leveled itself in about five minutes to a really smooth, consistent finish over the paint on the spoons I had previously sprayed when testing the paint.
On my first decaled body, I applied way too much Satin finish because it is clear, and I couldn't see the atomized paint stream coming out of my airbrush...Uh Oh!!! I set it aside to dry and re-positioned myself in front of my spray booth so that I could see the paint stream and did a much better job on the second body...applying a relatively thick coat to hide the nearly matte Microscale decal film.
I decided then to take a look at the first body I had screwed up, and I was very pleasantly surprised that the paint had dried to an excellent, thin, smooth surface...and additionally, the "watermarks" from excessive Micro-Sol applications were completely eradicated! Excellent.
The "thick" Satin finish I applied on the rest of the parts also dried to a thin, glass-smooth, hard finish very quickly. Whatever Tru-Color puts in their paint and thinner allows it to level and dry in an excellent manner!
I needed to take these finished shells that evening to my partner's house for him to assemble and place on the DCC-ized Kato chassis, and I finished my last part...set it aside to dry, cleaned up my bottles and airbrush...took the dry parts off of their respective hemostats hanging in my spray booth, put them in a box and went to his home. He took them, and started assembling the engines about 3 hours after I had put the Satin finish on the last part...no fingerprints, no stickiness...no denting from handling...perfectly dry and hard in about 3 hours from painting. I was, and AM, very impressed!
So, I highly recommend Tru-Color Paint for its utility, excellent finish, excellent drying time and ease of decaling...even with not-so-great decals. I haven't used it for any of my UP projects yet, so I can't comment on its color, but I'll be doing some UP caboose painting with it in the very near future to find out.
Photo (1) - Tru-Color Paint finish on Kato EMD SD70ACe cabs:
Photo (2) - Tru-Color Paint finish on Kato EMD SD70ACe body showing excellent smoothness and lack of detail hiding:
Photo (3) - Decaling in-progress on both maroon and green parts:
Photo (4) - Shiny, smooth paint and not-so-shiny decal film on Pennsy Brunswick Green EMD SD70M body:
Photo (5) - Curved Pennsy nose stripes and Pennsy Keystone insignia on maroon & green cabs:
Photo (6) - Finished & assembled maroon & green engines, note the excellent Satin finish coat while sitting at Riverside on a preserved part of Nate's layout:
Photo (7) - Finished fantasy Pennsy engines:
Photo ( 8 ) - Finished Kato EMD SD70ACe in Tru-Color Pennsy Passenger Car Maroon Paint w Microscale Decals sealed with Tru-Color Satin finish:
Photo (9) - Finished Kato EMD SD70M in Tru-Color Pennsy Brunswick Green w Microscale Decals sealed with Tru-Color Satin finish:
Photo (10) - Eleven of the 16 fantasy Pennsy modern engines I've finished so far for this job:
I've got five more maroon bodies to complete, then I'll be finished with this job. One thing to note is that Tru-Color Paint doesn't hide any flaws or original paint that didn't strip well, so ya gotta use care when stripping old paint off to get as much of it as you can removed, and not scratch the parts with a slip of the toothbrush, because the paint won't hide these flaws.
Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore
