Lots of projects on the work bench at this time. Local Hobby Shop, Trainmaster Models in Buford Georgia had their annual 4th of July Sale. Got up there early on the 4th and came home with a nice sized bag of goodies. Noticed a P-2000 wheel set was damaged in the package so I returned on the 5th to exchange the wheel sets. Of course I came home with a another bag of "stuff". Anyway it was a great sale and they even had complimentary hot dogs and sides on the 4th. So lots of projects on the workbench should translate to lots of Blog entries going forward.
Now back to our topic.... Penn Central 229007. Looking to expand my running fleet and using items I already owned I pulled a 50' Mechanical Reefer from the bottom of one of my storage containers. The car is a Model Power product that I purchased in the early 1990's. The car was lettered for the Burlington Northern but the car languished in the storage container not seeing any run time year after year. Reason....The lettering was applied to a green plastic shell. The lettering was nice but the car always looked out of place and very toy like as I added and upgraded my fleet. So I decided to give the car a second life.
If you are a rivet counter stop here.
Prior to painting the car I attempted to remove the lettering with 91% alcohol. After several days it was apparent that the lettering was impervious to the alcohol. So I just painted right over the car using a rattle can jade green that I purchased from American Slings in Florida.
The newly painted 50' Reefer with decals ready to go.
The completed reefer car. The car lettering was cobbled together from Microscale decals 87-1096 Penn Central Freight cars with Penn Central style lettering, 87-1098 Penn Central Esoterica or non-standard boxcar lettering and their freight car data decals. The "P", from 87-1098 is the faded red version. The data under the PC appears darker. This is because I used a sharpie marker on the back of the decal sheet so I could read the lettering. I had read that this would not affect the decal. Wrong. It did. Maybe I used too much.
PCA 229007 has been released from the paint shop and awaits pick up with PC Coil Coach 8091. Topic for next Blog post. From the internet... The letters "PCA" and "PCB" were used on Penn Central-painted equipment basically for the purpose of tracking down certain leased railroad cars (mainly box cars painted with these reporting marks) that were insured, and required to be insured by the leasing companies (incase PC lost these certain cars because of their financial troubles). Later, these special reporting marks were not used, and the reporting marks "PC" were used as before for these railroad cars.
That's a good looking car John! Nice job giving it a new lease on life and an appearance to be proud of! The PCA calling marks make it especially interesting. I have a bunch of those on some mostly used decal sheets. Hmmmm...you're inspiring me! Would you be willing to share what brand of spray paint you used? I've painted some cabooses and a couple of gons with various brands and the differences in shade are noticeable. Fortunately this sometimes happened on the prototype.
ReplyDeleteVery nice work! I'm looking forward to the coil coach installment!
Ralph
Thank You Ralph! I get the spray paint from American Slings and Patio Supplies. It is SP-277 Jade Green. http://americanslings.com/slings-patio-supplies/ The paint itself is manufactured by Raabe Corporation PO Box 1090 Menomonee Falls WI 53052-1090 so you may be able to locate it elsewhere as well. As for the different shades Athearn, Walther's Bachmann, etc PC greens are all different. As you pointy out it happens on the prototype.
ReplyDeleteThe coach car in the picture was inspired by your videos showing your KP&W. Need to take a few more pics and put that presentation together. Hope you will not mind me mentioning the KP&W in the entry. There will be a tie in story. If you object after seeing it let me know and I will remove and edit the blog entry.
John
Thanks for the info about the paint. I've used stuff I've found at Michael's crafts an Home Depot.
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to refer to the KP&W! I'd be honored to have my freelance mentioned in the blog as part of the story. This is fun stuff!