Painting the Tender
I approached the tender body the same way as the boiler. As the majority of the tender body is painted in the lighter daylight colors the first coat on the tender was Floquil’s Primer Grey. Next I sprayed the center Daylight Orange stripe. I then masked off the orange stripe and painted the lower and upper portions of the tender with Daylight Red. At this point I didn’t worry about the upper and lower boundaries of the red area too much as I would be spraying black over the top next.
Here are some photos of the first few steps:
Now is when this paint job quickly became very tedious. On the Engineer’s side of the tender the lower red / black border needs to be behind the piping that runs along the bottom. On the Fireman’s side the red / black border is just above the single large pipe running along the bottom. On both sides the border runs behind the toolboxes, with the toolboxes painted black. Because of all of the piping supports, the masking tape had to be cut and fit into each gap. Needless to say this was only the start of a LOT of time spent masking.
To make the curved black / red transition on the lower front of the tender I first drew out a template on a piece of graph paper. I then cut out the piece of paper and held it up against the tender. I kept adjusting and re-cutting until the piece of paper followed the correct curve. Then I took the piece of paper and taped it to a piece of clear acetate. I then cut the acetate to follow the same shape as the paper. Now I had the correct curve cut on the acetate. Then I took a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the acetate, and then carefully used a razor blade to cut the tape along the curve. The razor blade was guided by the cut in the acetate, such that the masking tape is cut along the same curve. For the opposite side of the tender, I stuck the masking tape on the back side of the acetate and repeated the process. This worked very well and as a result the curves on both sides of the are exactly the same. I would used this same method later to cut the masking tape needed for the curved silver striping.
Here are a few of photos after the black had been painted:
After I had finished with the black I realized that the lower red / black border should have been closer to the bottom of the tender. So after another tedious masking exercise I re-sprayed the red to bring the border down to where it should have been. With all the colors now on the tender I turned my attention to the silver striping.
I painted the stripes in three separate painting sessions. I first masked off the tender and painted the two stripes along the red / orange borders in one session. After baking I removed all the tape and masked the tender to leave the straight lower stripe exposed. Because of all of the piping running along the bottom this turned out to be the most tedious (and time consuming) masking job on the tender. While I used masking tape to define the stripes, I used Micro mask on the toolboxes, ladders, and the lower piping that was to remain black. After spraying the lower stripe I baked the tender again and then removed the tape. Lastly I masked off the outline of the upper stripe and curved portion and sprayed these two sections. After the last baking I took the model to the sink and carefully washed off the Micro mask.
There were a couple of spots that I missed with the Micro mask, and a couple of dings in the black, so I masked off the appropriate areas and re-sprayed a little touch up here and there.
As with the locomotive I then sprayed over the color with a light coat of Testor’s gloss coat to prepare for the decals. As with the locomotive the numbering and Southern Pacific lettering came from the Microscale decal set. The tender data and the rear light number boards came from the Foothill Model Works (San Juan Decal) set.
So here is the finished tender body with the decals installed:
Note that the lower red / black border is now where it should be. At this point the tender is still glossy.
Here are some photos of the assembled tender:
(Click on any of these photos for a larger sized version)
At this point I just need to add a MV lens to the rear light, and add a little light weathering to finish off the tender.
I should also note that the original wheels had all of the plating worn off so I replaced them with solid nickel silver wheels from NWSL. I used the weathered version of the wheels and lightly bead blasted the treads to expose the nickel silver. This gave the wheel treads the proper shiny color of a rail worn tread.
Page 7 - Last updated April 19, 2004