Going to get started on conversion of a Kato F40PH n-scale unit to a Chicago-area Metra unit: Here is where I'm at so far - I've stripped the shell down with Chameleon paint stripper and then "shaved" off the molded in grab handles. I'm going to add BLMA details for the grab irons and such since they are so prominent on this unit with white paint. There are two sticking points I have right now: I have no idea what to do about the ditch lights and running lights on the front of the Metra unit as the Amtrak unit didn't have them. Secondly, if anyone has any recommendations for paint color matches I'm all ears as I can't find anything online so far. - jamie
The white grabs will make a world of difference. Check this one out to see what it looks like without them. http://cgi.ebay.com/Chicago-Metra-N-scale-Kato-F40PH-164-NIB-custom_W0QQitemZ6042347168QQcategoryZ19124QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Jamie, this will help us both out, I have the colors you need and I need to watch as I have a customer who wants some of these. Metra Blue use Polly Scale 10 parts GN Big Sky Blue #F414203 1 part Conrail Blue #F414206 1 part Reefer White #F414113 Metra Red Use Polly Scale 5 parts SP Daylight Red #F414186 2 parts Signal Red #F404091 1 part Reefer Yellow #F414122 Can't wait to see your results!
A great project. For the ditch lights and others might I suggest the very tiny SMT LEDs? Jim Hinds at Richmond Controls has them, with leads attached, in just about any color you want including two shades of white. The LEDs will fit nicely into a ditch light casting from, say, Sunrise. If you care to check my web site, you'll see examples of SD40-2s and a SD75i that I've done. The wiring is a bit fiddly, but quite do-able. I'm looking forward to watching your progress! Good Luck!
I'd defintely go with BNSF7173's paint mixes. Metra's blue is much lighter than Conrail but, darker than GN Sky Blue. The housings for the ditch lights and "tail lights" are simply blocks added on.
Thanks gang, this is what makes Trainboard such a great resource... On the colors - the orange/red on the top looks to be fairly easy to replicate. The blue is another story and I'll start with BNSF7173's recommendations. I'm probably being a bit too anal, but I want that blue to look right. That ebay auction linked above looks a bit too aquamarine in color for my tastes. So I'll likely be doing some paint sample tests. It doesn't help that the Metra blue color seems to be slightly different shades in nearly every photo it is in. Thanks for the tips on the ditch lights... I have some fiber optic here that I picked up at Al's but haven't messed with it yet. I'll keep updating this thread with information as I have it.
It is a weird blue. Metra keeps the engines so clean that there isn't any fading from loco to loco either. I have a Walthers HO F40 in Metra, they got the colors spot on...if that's any help.
The Metra Blue looks like Amtrak blue.. Modelflex makes that.. As for the lights, you may want to try small square LED's and paint the housing to match the model, leaving a dot unpainted for the lens. Kel
Ok, I did some paint tests today: What might not show up on your monitor well in the above images is that most of the regular Polly Scale paints weren't vibrant enough of a blue regardless of how we mixed them. Jim's Metra Blue recipe is pretty close but it was a little light and still didn't have the distinct Metra Blue saturation I was looking for (told you I was a little anal retentive...). Anyway, a friend of mine has some Games Workshop acrylic paints and pulled out a color called "Enchanted Blue" which looked darn close in the jar. We mixed it with varying amounts of Reefer White and finally got the color nearly spot on. When I remix the color and do some airbrush testing I'll post up the final ratio that seemed to work. Here is a LINK to Games Workshop's online store. Now I'm waiting on the BLMA stuff...
Jamie, nothing wrong with being anal, thats why I count rivets in my sleep One mistake I see that your making however is using a photo for color refrence. Rule number one, and this was beat into my head from Marty McGuirk and my first Teacher Alan Belcher of Concord Car shops. Only use a photo for prototype location of details and markings. The photo can and will play tricks on your mind. I'm planning on doing a seminar on color theory at Galesburg this year and an example I use is a fully restored GG1. The first photo was taken in the morning, second at noon and third at dusk. The morning color looks like a black, the afternoon looks closer to the actual color, Brunswick Green and the late afternoon color looks like a dark brown. This is true with just about any color. Please remeber I'm not avocating chiping some paint tonight at the Metra Station Rather take the paint sheet you have made and (if you live close) check it out against the prototype in good sunlight. The color recipe I gave you was compiled years ago and was a joint effort from modelers and the many railroads, so I would say it is 90% accurate. Also when it concerns colors such as black, blue, red and other "rich" colors, having it lighter a shade than the prototype is often better for two reasons. Because of the size of our models it looks as if everything has been proportionally compressed except the colors, which leads into my next reason, scale color theory. It is a technique used by the plastic modelers on military items. There really is no set ratio on this. Most of my older units have a white added to the mixture to represent scale color, also I very rarely use a pure black on my loco's, I use a grimey black which as you know is a dark grey. When first painted it looks rather "odd" but once the model is finished, it looks spot on. Here is an example of grimey black, lightend B&M marron and some gold mixed in for good weathering. Here you can see the Grimey Black accentuates the detail beter rather than getting lost in a pure black. If you can't get close to your prototype (I know the feeling as my prototypes have been gone some 25 years) you will have to determin the best color match with your eyes. I would not worry too much as color is subjective and I have seen many locomotives working for the same company in four shades of color, ie the B&M. Even if Metra is a clean operation, don't forget that even colors from the same paint company can have what we call drift in different batchs. Ok enough I'm getting off, besides I want to see this thing finished. I'm in no means an expert and I don't want to come across as tooting my own Nathen 5P, but I do get paid for such things. One last thing, I don't know but it is possiable that the mixture I gave you is old, 1990 vintage and the Metra engines may now be painted with a different companys "blue." Sorry to give you a headache Jamie, welcome to my world [ March 15, 2006, 08:37 AM: Message edited by: BNSF7173 ]
Great post Jim and good points... At lunch I went out and at great risk of getting yelled at/arrested I was able to get close enough to a Metra F40PH today to hold the color sample up close and the color we formulated is almost dead on with the current blue being used (this was also at high-noon bright sunshine). I didn't try the nuttiness of holding a camera up, while holding up a color sample against a running prototype - I have a family that would like to see me come home at night. I've done quite a lot of work in advertising and photography so my color matching skills have gotten pretty good but also realistic in that adding a little road grime would change things drastically anyway. Too bad we can't just use a Pantone guide for colors. I'd be interested in seeing your presentation on colors as this is a good source of debate and discussion. Theoretically if I go to photograph a prototype like the Metra unit and capture it on film in the colors I see that day then I've accurately captured that prototype's color. Time of day is a huge impact so then the discussion turns towards time of day and clouds or no clouds. High-noon sun will give the brightest direct sun color renditions but with a warmer tone. Light clouds will give us an even diffused lighting effect, however it will generally blow the blues out a bit and desaturate the colors a bit. Getting a good output to our printer that matches what I saw when I took the picture is critical too and we came pretty close to achieving that. So we took the printed photo into a room with florescent lighting that would be common to our layout lighting and mixed the colors under that light. Then to make this even more confusing I photographed the color samples under daylight balanced highoutput florescent photo studio lights. Anyway, this experiment seemed to work, but I can see the pitfalls as well. Also it isn't easy (like you mentioned Jim) to make samples and then run out and find a locomotive to hold them up to... So.... that said let's enter into the equation scale color. I'd agree that we should go a shade lighter than what we came up with. If for no other reason than the paint is going to oxidize over time and get lighter on the prototype with time anyway. Plus with more and more modelers weathering their equipment it is going to dull things down even further. I think what I'll do is remix this blue we came up with and try spraying it from the airbrush and see what I get. Thanks again Jim for the insightful post. - jamie
Jamie, glad the information was of help to you. I see your just down the road from me. I would love to have you join me at the Galesburg RR Days train show for my seminar on all things color. Last year we had just a few gentleman from Milwaukee and Madison, but we had a great time discussing why trains are the colors they are. Good catch on the unit in noon sun, the only better time is right after a rain shower with no clouds, the rain "cleans up" the atmosphere, but those conditions are hard to find. Half the fun for me is the research and the mixing and getting things as prototypical as possiable. Last night I spent the better part of the night weathering my newest locomotive per the photograph I have. I think I pulled it off, we'll see. Now that my B&M project is done, you have "lit a fire" and I'm ready to order some F40PH's and paint some Metra for my customer! Keep us posted as we are all interested in this build.
There sure is some good information here. I don't know if others would follow a thread on this, but scale colors or "shades" are something to consider. Thanks for the info and the techniques, bnsf7173.
Ok, a quick update on the project and some "lessons learned" The unit is painted and overall I'm pretty pleased with the color. In the photograph below the blue is a little lighter and less rich than in real life. The orange is pretty darn close (thanks Jim!) and I'd even consider adding a touch of white to bring it down a notch. The Micro Scale decals were a lesson learned. There are two different sizes of the Metra logo on the sheet one with a smaller "Metropolitain Rail" script underneath and one without. I used the one without and after applying it to the loco found out it is too large. So I stripped those off and used the smaller logo with the script trimmed off and that is much closer. However it is a tad on the small size, but far closer than the larger decal. I also needed to trim the front nose stripes decal down to match the angles on the hood since the decal is a rectangle. The first time I did this it was dead on perfect in size and placement. That is until I had to mask the bottom of the loco for the white stripe and it pulled off part of the decal - damn. So on to decal number two and this time I got carried away and trimmed a little too much off and now it isn't straight and shows too much of the nose at the top - so I'll be ordering another set of decals! This was my first time applying decals and it went pretty smoothly thanks to the abundance of advice out there. Paint-wise there are a few things that bug me. One I got a little too close with the airbrush near the front of the cab and it went on a bit too thick. Won't make that mistake again if I can avoid it. So with that under my belt I went the opposite direction when I airbrushed the lower white belt line and didn't go heavy enough to make it a brighter white. I've had some issues with the blue paint chipping easily on the shell (orange is dead solid) and it is likely because I didn't wait long enough to let it set up. I still need to semi-gloss clear coat the whole thing to even up the decal sheen. After that I'll install the BLMA details. I had a set of 18" drop grabs on hand and they aren't right and I've ordered up the 15" drop grabs that should be here this week. Once all paint work is done the details will go on next and then I can reinstall the window glass and other stuff. So far it looks like I'll be able to pilfer parts from the new BLMA E/F unit detail kit. Oh and I also weathered up the undercarriage a bit to match prototype photos. I'll weather the shell as well. So that's where it's at so far... more photos as things progress.
What a great thread. Great discussions and ideas, photos, and RESULTS! I'm about to be a transplanted Texan living about 3 miles from the racetrack and I'm watching with interest as I might have to paint up some Metra F40PH's someday. Now that you've painted up a beautiful model, Kato will release one in Metra paint! Of course, their colors will be all over the place so don't fret if they do...you'll still have a superior model.
