Wolfcreek Update-SEPT

DragonFyreGT Sep 12, 2009

  1. DragonFyreGT

    DragonFyreGT TrainBoard Member

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    Well, due to an overloaded work schedule, i.e. someone decided to mouth off to the boss and I have to fill in for said fired employee, I will be missing the local train show this month. However, all is not lost. I do have some locomotive updates.

    A while ago on eThief (Aren't I clever?), I saw a custom Painted Burlington Northern PA-1 that got a lot of gears turning in my head, like painting my handrails white and edging the step ladders white. Well that same unit is back up only for sale by it's new owner. This person has a BN FA/FB set that has the same modifications. Now I don't think at this point in the game, with what I invested into my booster unit, I want to abandon her now. But what inspired me is the nose of this FA-1 had a black patch. I thought to myself, "This makes it look very nice, and gives it a nice look."

    The FA having a flat nose, the black paint makes it stand out. But like the auction photo, I didn't want to have a solid black nose. That wouldn't be very BN like. So I started getting mask tape and carefully edged off the square I wanted. Then, by hand (as I've gotten good at now), I used a broadhead brush to carefully paint the edges, then the rest of the area out towards the headlight. I will take better photographs in the morning. But the end result is beautiful.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Now my brain screamed at me "This doesn't look right! You've ruined a vintage unit!" I told my brain that it was wrong. That nagging doubt isn't about my decision to paint the nose, it's because, without the handrails in white across the nose, it looks plain. But that's a simple solution that I can fix at anytime. Nose Door Grab Irons first, then the top nose handrails. And believe me, when I get done with her, you'll never believe that this was a stock aristocraft unit, that got the first class treatment she deserved.
     
  2. DragonFyreGT

    DragonFyreGT TrainBoard Member

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    I would like to add that my boss gave me just enough time to run out to the train show to pickup my Rio Grande Boxcar. Nice of him to do it since he didn't like the fact that I had to work today. But when I got there, paid my ticket fee, the boxcars were gone. One with metal wheels, the other with plastic. Both gone. The guy said he held them as long as he could but when he didn't see me, he sold them. I missed it by 5 minutes. But there will always be next month.

    I appreciate my boss giving me an extra hour on my lunch break to attempt to do this. Even he was saddened that I didn't quite get it.
     
  3. Dave Winter

    Dave Winter TrainBoard Member

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    I think the black nose is excellent and it looks like just the thing that might be done during a major maintenance program on any class 1 railway or even to a single locomotive on a short line road. It just makes sense and is very prototypical.

    Isn't there a single white stripe missing there?
     
  4. DragonFyreGT

    DragonFyreGT TrainBoard Member

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    Yes there is, Aristocraft didn't finish that stripe because there was a prototype photo (I can't find it in my books atm) of that on a Road Switcher. The original BN Paint scheme was a test, a CB&Q GP40 wore inverted nose chevrons and the hockey stick stripe. After that they switched to the diagonal lines. A Couple SD's (I think) had part of the top stripe missing. Personally I like it w/o the last stripe. The paint on this unit is already fantasy, so Why not do something a bit different.

    My original Idea was to put grip tape across the nose in between the ladders like the EMD F Units, but I think the black top nose looks better. A Unit that survived the scrapper's torch and had to be rebuilt. It works perfect! And I wanted to round it off, but I think the square against the rounded off curve works very well. It brings that "Rebuild" factor to life.

    Oh and I should mention the Hockey Stick stripe will most likely be extended from the nose of the cab back, like the GP40 Test. The reason for this is, I don't want to have to redecal if I don't have to.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 15, 2009
  5. DragonFyreGT

    DragonFyreGT TrainBoard Member

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    Been a busy day, sort of. During my lunch break I decided to swap out some of my older FA Black plastic grills on my FB. Well I accidently unscrewed the fuel tank on the FB and found Fuel Fillers! Removable too! So I painted them. Here's the end result with Flat Red from Testors Automotive Colors:

    FA_FuelFiller.jpg FB_FuelFiller.jpg
     
  6. EMD trainman

    EMD trainman TrainBoard Member

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    I noticed there are many variations of paint schemes and experimental paint schemes on other road names myself. Rio Grande went thru a few themselves during the early 40's and 50's with the EMD F units. Rio Grande actually had 4 black paint schemed EMD FT locomotives, 2 A units and 2 B units for a special train. Then of course the different variations of Yellow with muliti stripes, single stripes, black roofs, silver roofs, plain yellow nose on the A unit, then a black square like the on DragonFyreGT painted here when the roofs were painted black. Then a silver or greyish square when the roofs were siler or greyish. I think every railroad experimented during those years with paint schemes when passenger service was big and locomotives had to look neat and attractive to get people to choose thier railroad to ride on. Look at SouthWest Airlines for example, everyone knows that airplane just from seeing the blue and red paint scheme on the plane.

    When Rio Grande wasn't so big into passenger service and Amtrack pretty much took that over in the 70's, paint schemes stayed pretty much standard for Rio Grande because it was mainly just freight service after that point in time although the ski train kept the wonderful yellow and silver paint scheme. Speaking of odd and ski trains, there were Rio Grande F40PH locomotives painted in the old EMD F-7 yellow and silver/greyish paint scheme with a single black stripe pulling the ski train.

    I have also liked the Burlington Northern paint scheme and I think DragonfyreGT has done a good job here, especially on the B unit, I'm pretty impressed with that.
     
  7. DragonFyreGT

    DragonFyreGT TrainBoard Member

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    After Burlington Northern's single year of passenger service, and when Amtrak took over, they had an entire fleet of F3's, F7's and F9's that continued to wear their passenger Hockey Stick Stripe. While the E8's and E9's continued Commuter service in chicago, the F-Units mostly got jockied onto freight. I can only find 4 F9 ABBA's that were tacked onto Burlington Northern Business Train service, before their immediate retirement. At that point, SD45's took over.

    BN ran into problems with finances and they couldn't afford to retire the covered wagons, so many of them were thrown on freight service and it wasn't uncommon to see a Hockey Stick Striped passenger F hauling a load of dirty coal cars in an out of Minneapolis or Chicago rail hubs. BN actually was the last railroad to scrap active duty F Units (Business/Executive units do not count here. I'm talking standard freight service) simply because of their aging motive power and the need to use all available resources.

    Would the FA/FB's been in a hockey stick stripe? They were SP&S Freight units by the time of the merger. I like to think they would have. After all before that was a passenger stripe, it was on experimental freight units. BN's paint can has been one of legends, imo. The white tigerstripe, the black tigerstripe, the white face, the inverted chevrons, the diagonal stripes, the passenger hockey stick stripe, the SD70 experimental green/white tone, and my personal favorite the Buisness Executive Winter Green and Cream. But I always loved second hand units where BN Patched them with a Green and white text logo/number. Patched units are always neat~
     

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