Union Pacific F7 part II

I haven't been idle over the summer, but other hobbies and priorities took precedence over modeling and blogging. Now that fall is here in full force, indoor sports once again bubble to the surface...

This is a continuation of a story started over a year ago, where I picked up an even older planned project to convert a Life-Like F unit in SOO colors into a UP passenger hauler: http://theatomfurnace.blogspot.com/2020/09/on-bench-life-like-f7-bodies.html. (click here)

I had last attempted stripping the body using Pine-Sol, but wasn't happy, and moved on to other parts of my backlog. I've been on a railroad kick for a while, and decided to pull this back out and give it the Easy-Off treatment. The original black, white, and red was unaffected, but it removed everything I had added and attempted removing in my last attempt. This gave me a clean starting point. I gave it a coat of white enamel overall as "primer", which proved adequate as a base color, but...

After the bad experience with the Badger UP Armour Yellow acrylic, I sourced a new-to-me brand, Tru Color which required its own mostly acetone thinner. This was sprayed over the white after a 24 hour drying period.

Covers well, nice color,  even sheen. So far, so good. I used Modelmaster Dark Gull Grey for my "Harbor Mist" because a. I had it, b. I am comfortable spraying it, and c. It looked reasonably close to.the roofs of the cars it'd be hauling. A little Tamiya tape for a sharp edged mask, and...

Crap. Lots of paint failure under the normally gentle Tamiya Tape. It was over a virgin, 24 hr dried enamel surface, and had itself cured for another 24. I would not recommend using tru-color over anything they don't specifically recommend, in order to avoid all of the rework.

Next High Risk item in my quiver: Walthers decals dated 1957. What was I thinking? "Gee, that's a good price on Ebay".

Fortunately for me, Walthers made a good decal, and the man who had these in his stash all those years kept them clean, dry, and sealed. Went on like new.

Film's a little thick but should largely disappear under a coat of acrylic matte varnish.

Fortunately the decal set came with a generous supply of red stripes which, after my tape mask disaster, would be preferred to mask and spray.

The trucks and fuel tank casting got the gray treatment as well. It will get its cab numbers, then an overall matte varnish layer. Then I'll add glazing and grabirons, and a pilot coupler. But first, a quick glamor shot:

Vallejo matte varnish applied:

In this shot you can see a trick from aircraft modeling applied to railroading, namely, preshading on black. Under the horizontal stainless steel grills of the prototype are openings into the carbody which show the internal framing. Not part of this old budget RTR model, I painted in acrylic black these openings, and once dry, oversprayed in chrome silver, but intentionally not heavy enough to hide the black. It allows those faux  internal openings to be revealed. 

........

Now for glazing,  horns, grabirons,  number boards. And some break in of an old, rarely run electric motor and drive train.