Painting
After all the repairs were finished the next step was to paint the locomotive. I decided that I wanted a lightly weathered flat finish to represent a locomotive with some road wear on it. Floquil paints were used throughout; the basic black color was a mixture of 2 parts weathered black to one part engine black. The smoke and fire boxes were painted with a mixture of graphite and old silver. I don’t exactly remember the proportions; I just added some old silver to lighten it up a bit.
Before painting I took everything apart and degreased all the parts in lacquer thinner. All the wheels and bearing areas were masked off with tape prior to painting. On the boiler I painted the graphite mix first, then after baking and masking I came back and painted the rest of the boiler with the black mix. I really didn’t take any progress pictures during the painting unfortunately. I would refer you to the write up on the MT-4 to see more of the step by step painting process.
Here are a couple of pictures showing the locomotive’s frame before and after painting:
Before moving on to all the finished photos I want to mention one more modification I made to the original model. Unfortunately I had everything put together before I thought about taking a picture, so this is the only picture I have showing the new boiler weight.
I have placed the original weight next to the boiler to show how small it was. This was obviously one of those locomotives that the importer was trying to weight on the shipping costs. The photo shows the new weight inside of the boiler. The front of the new weight is in same position as the old weight, but I have extended it all the way back to the front of the smoke box area. You can see the area where I milled out the lead weight to provide clearance for the drive train components.
Page 7 - Last updated January 22, 2004