The Australian SD50s...the need a second roof just slightly higher over the cab. Good luck with your model, Kevin! I love that paint scheme...
This started out as most of my modeling efforts at the time 10-12 years ago with an Athearn model. I took the prototype photos in GJ in or around 2001. Odd that they put the kind of Dyn fan on they did, I guess the Burnham Shops just bolted on what they had handy. I worked there as a machinist, and got to know some of these locomotives on a first hand basis. There was a guy that would start the shift with a handful of those high voltage stickers, and when he ran out he was done for the day LOL. This has all the usual details too many to list. The most difficult was the light package on this thing, Headlights, Mars lights, Ditch lights, and Step lights. Stuck way too many high voltage stickers as well. Not nearly as good as some you guys efforts but I enjoyed building it. The roof top shot is a little fuzzy as the unit was running and thats the exhaust your seeing lol. They are grainy as I only have the prints left and these are scans of them. Could have made the model more dirty, maybe I will work on that someday. As always thanks for stopping by.
Lovely 'cept for those darn ditch lights! You started out with a GP40-2 shell to get a GP40. What mods did you need to do to convert a dash 2 to a plain GP40? Atlas offered a retooled GP40 with small herald D&RGW back in 1999 and available since. Of course the big detail they need are the Mars nose lights.
Thanks Guys for the comments, I probably used the Athearn because it was what I had on hand. Those BB Athearns were easy and cheap to come by, used to buy them by dozen lol, and a great starting point for many projects for me. I have always enjoyed, doing surgery on these things to get where I wanted to go. All I did was remove the sight glass door and replace it with a Cannon & Co door. Used plastic handrails from a later production run, have also about replaced my entire fleet with the Hex drives. I almost have enough DW castings now to install ditch lights on my entire D&RGW fleet as well including the SD9's. Still thinking about that though.
It came out looking great. I think for me the nose light would be the hard part. I've seen a lot of models where the nose light came out looking lousy in the past so it made me nervous to do the same thing. Yours looks good and another fellow D&RGW modeler has done some of his engines and they came out looking great - he is quite good with the weathering too. Check out his photo's here in the Sunday Photo Fun topics - there is an Archive too with many more past Sunday postings: http://atlasrescueforum.proboards.com/thread/4467/sunday-photo-fun-2-16 He painted my brass RGZ P-S combine for me and did a very nice job.
Just a quick/bad shot of my big boy &my EM1 im hardcore UNION PACIFIC modeler but i had to get the EM1
Tom: What do you use to fade your Grande locos? Air brush and very thinned out grey paint? Rio Grande modelers want to know!
Hi Paul, Thanks for the question. Myself, I use many different colors, bear in mind that locomotives go thru a 92 day FRA inspection, or did back in the day. Usually at the end of that inspection they were washed. Now that could mean they were sprayed with a detergent, then rinsed off, this would get rid of some dust and oil, but not much else on occasion, once in a while a loco would actually get scrubbed with a brush, but that was not all that common as power was always short, and when repaired and inspected they were pressed back into service. The the washing had little to do with the appearance of a unit but almost everything to do with removing any oily slippery surface for safety purposes. Locomotives are mixed and matched based on tonnage and locomotive availability, and available days before inspection intervals, this could explain why you see relatively clean locomotives with really dirty ones. I have been on trains climbing the front range at 12-15 mph, you cant imagine the oily smoke that comes out of 4-5 locomotives in a tunnel. I doesn't take long for them to be a mess. The biggest thing for DRGW locomotives for me is to consider the amount of time they spent, at slow speeds with the sanders cycling on and off, pulling the many miles of mountain grade territory, this with any period of time will give a dirty sandy look on the trucks. Journal boxes were oil bath, so not unusual to see them oily too. The units will take on a Smokey look on top, to a sandy appearance towards the bottom, with a dusty look overall. My practice is to use chalks for smokey, rusty oily black colors, as dust and sand seem to disappear with a dullcoat application. Dust and sand as well as lighter colors are airbrushed on with many layers of very thin washes, sometimes many layers to get the desired effect. This (photos) is generally what I use when weathering a locomotive or car for that matter.
isn't it amazing the stuff you can accumulate for weathering!!!! I haven't tried the smoke spray, but I will, thanks Tom for sharing!
