Welcome to the home of the Spindletop Railroad!

Follow along as I try to create a freelanced railroad and build my first HO scale layout. I hope to write a blog that helps others in building layouts, detailing engines, and creating their own railroads while identifying the road bumps to avoid and the fun aspects of model railroading to look forward to!

Thursday, January 29, 2015

New Paint Scheme

Howdy everyone!  I finally got a paint scheme nailed down that I like.  What do y'all think?

Yes there is also now a new caboose!  More on that later.

The biggest conflict on what I want has been to have something simple but distinct.  I do not have the skills, equipment, or finances to get into really well done painting and decaling.  In my past attempts, the paint goes on too thick or pools up, the decals never come out the right color, and custom work is expensive, etc., etc....  So for now I will stick with the simple design I have on the above.  

I chose to have the body be a simple black color.  Both loco and caboose were sprayed using a regular rattle can of flat black paint.  The bottom of the plow and the edge of the walkways are Signal Yellow by Floquil that I hand painted.  All of the handrails on both were done using a yellow paint pen I got from work.  Big box hobby stores have these as well for good prices.  The lettering, conspicuity stripes, and nose stripes are from Microscale.  And yes, the names on the sides were done one letter at a time.  I spent 2 hours on the caboose name and it STILL isn't straight.  

The face colors are the finishing touch.  I love my home state and I wanted to represent it somehow. Seeing lines such as the Heart of Texas or Alamo Gulf Coast made me want to paint the whole thing in a flag scheme, but that would have killed my OCD (curving masking tape?  No way) and was outside my painting abilities.  So I scaled it back and found out that this looks really nice as well!  I plan to stick with this scheme for all future locomotives and cabeese (cabooses?  Seriously need to figure out that plural).

And now for the random pic of the day!



Today's selection is a fun one.  I found this beauty entirely by accident on my way home from work.  I had heard she was coming, but I figured she would be going well away from my area of town.  Then BOOM! her she is waiting to head South on the BNSF line along Mykawa Rd.  I do not remember much of the history of this engine, other than she is a former Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range (I think that is right) locomotive.  The best my fellow Railspotters and I can make out, she is going to be a industrial locomotive in Bloomington, TX, possibly at the port near the city.  Anyways, it was an absolute joy to see this old girl.  Hopefully there are many more safe miles in her furture!


4 comments:

  1. I have to say that I like this paint scheme better than the green one. :)

    Masking curves isn't terribly difficult if you lay out the masking tape on a piece of glass and cut it with an X-acto knife. I think you remember the GT&W F-units I painted for the club, right? The curve on the nose was done that way.

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  2. Thanks Robert! I do remember your beautiful locomotives, but I do not have the steady hand needed to do that yet. I hope to in the future though!

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  3. Practice makes perfect! i couldn't have made them come out as well as they did if I hadn't tried and failed and learned a few times along the way. You'll get there too.

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  4. Practice makes perfect! i couldn't have made them come out as well as they did if I hadn't tried and failed and learned a few times along the way. You'll get there too.

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