They are just factory molded fans. I painted them silver then masked them off to paint the roof, then just lightly brushed the red onto the grills.
Daniel, nice job on the locomotive. What type of locomotive and road number is the one behind your GP-35 720? Joe
Daniel, ok I remember seeing your post and photos of 911 a few days ago. You do good work on your locomotives. Do you have any other locomotives in the assembly line and/or paint shop? Joe
Just a MoPac MP15DC. I'm weathering it now. I wasn't sure about posting that on frisco.org, though. Hah!
Great work Daniel. Steps you took to paint the fans: 1) Paint the blades silver 2) Wash black in to bring out the depth in the blades 3) Tape off the fans 4) Paint locomotive 5) Remove mask to reveal fans 6) Hand paint Mandarin Orange on top of fan grills I'm trying to work out in my head if this was the order or if you applied the thinned black wash at the end after the grills were hand painted. Thoughts? Once again, Really nice job! JFM
I did the black wash last as I was wanting to weather the entire engine anyway. If you didn't want to weather your engine you could follow the list as you described, but I use a gloss cote before the wash and thin the oil paint with turpenoid so it is quite easy to control with a fine brush. In other words, you could probably do it either way without problems. Follow up with dull cote. Actually, now that I think about it, I didn't even apply the wash to the blades on the GP35. So it really isn't needed but you could do it if you wanted.
So, in theory, I could add detail to the fans of a factory painted locomotive if I had a color matched paint to touch up the grills... Anyone have a guess what color is should use to touch up Atlas GP units? It isn't 16-157 Frisco Orange from Badger, that's for sure. The GP38s and GP15s that are Atlas factory painted seen to have a little brown mixed in with the orange. Thoughts? Why does my mind keep thinking up projects when my body (and worklife) can't keep up... JFM
If you just weather the fans with a wash, that will bring out the fan detail too. Testors Chevy Engine Block Red is about as close as I've been able to find. It's a little more red, but once you weather, it's hard to spot a touch up. Paul
Daniel, please post photos and how you weather the MoPac MP15DC. I'm sure the process could be copied to any other locomotive or railcars, besides most of us like Missouri Pacific stuff almost as well as Frisco. MoPac is my second choice of railroads followed by MKT, ATSF and KCS. Joe
