Removing Paint from a Model

I have been wanting to make some custom painted, Alaska Railroad passenger cars.  They would go well with an Alaska Railroad locomotive that I have, and a few of the McKinley Explorer cars.  I decided to start with several of their dome cars.  I wanted to make a couple of their ACF domes and a couple of their Budd domes.  The AFC domes were not a problem, I bought a pair of undecorated ACF dome coaches from Walthers City trains line (932-9581).  This all came about because I managed to find the pair of them for a bargain basement price.  So then I began looking for similar dome cars from Budd.  I knew Walthers had made some, because I have a model of the Empire Builder, and they were used on that train.  I searched all the websites and distributors I know of, but I was unable to locate any undecorated Budd domes, so I began searching for the cheapest ones I could find instead.  What I came up with was a pair of Empire Builder domes.  They are the same type of car I needed, just in the wrong paint scheme.

Before stripping paint, after the Turpenoid bath.
All photos by James Ogden.

As I contemplated how to turn the Empire Builder domes into Alaska Railroad domes, I thought of a few ways to go about painting them.  My first thought was to simply paint over the existing paint scheme.  The Alaska Railroad has a scheme that uses yellow and a dark blue.  The dark blue would go over the green and orange of the Great Northern easily enough, but I was concerned with the  yellow.  Being a lighter color, I was worried that it might show the original paint scheme a little, or require a ridiculous number of applications to properly hide it.  Not wanting to wast paint hiding paint, I decided to look around the somewhat limited resources of my work bench.  I found a can of Turpenoid that Steven had suggested I buy for various weathering projects.  Turpenoid is a cleaner for oil paints.  It is primarily designed to remove dried, or partly dried paint from brushes and hands.  I got thinking, Turpenoid is a paint remover, in a sense.  If it could remove paint from brushes and hands, maybe it could be at least moderately effective on a model.  I looked over the can to see the warnings and to determine if it was safe on plastic.  I could find nothing about it being harmful on plastic, so I decided to give it a try.

Car ends, after having the paint was scrubbed off.

I first placed the ends of the car in a plastic bag, and then poured a little Turpenoid in on top of them.  I sealed the bag, placed it in another one, and then placed the whole thing in a small bowl.  I wanted to contain leaks, if there were any.  Then I let them sit in their Turpenoid bath overnight.  I worked on a few other things, hoping the Turpenoid would not make my car ends disappear, and then went to bed.


The next morning, I got up and went to go look at the ends of the car.  They were still there!  That was a good start.   A little later, I took them out of the Turpenoid bath, and placed them on a plastic plate which had some Turpenoid in it.  I found a clean toothbrush on the workbench and decided to try scrubbing the paint off.  At first, it seemed like nothing was happening.  I looked over the end I was working with, and noticed that on some of the higher surfaces, the paint looked worn off.  Clearly that was the result of the Turpenoid and scrubbing, so I kept scrubbing, rinsing the toothbrush in the Turpenoid often.  Then, it seemed the results happened all at once.  As I was scrubbing, a hole appeared in the paint, revealing clean, grey plastic underneath.  Once that hole was there, things progressed faster, and in no time, most of the paint had come off.  I found that it took a little more work to get the paint out of some of the tighter spots, but as long as there was a fairly constant supply of clean Turpenoid, it just took some scrubbing.

Car side after removing the paint.  It is not perfect,
but it is clean enough to repaint.

Once all the paint was off the end of the car, I rinsed it in warm water, to get the Turpenoid and any sticking paint chips off.  I set it to dry, and repeated the whole process with the other end of the car.  Both ends were green.  I did not think much of that until later.  That night, I placed the sides of the car in the Turpenoid to soak.  I removed one the next day and began working on it.  Just as with the end of the car, the paint came off easier once it had been broken.  I also noticed something I did not expect.  The silver, yellow, and green paint all came off relatively easily.  It requited a bit of scrubbing, but not an excessive amount.  Under everything was a coat of orange paint, and for some reason, that was significantly more difficult to get off.  I continued scrubbing, and it did come off, but I found that the other colors would come off in just a minute or two, while the orange would take several minutes.  I have not experimented with any other paint schemes or colors, because those were the only colors I had to remove, but it seems that different paints have different characteristics when removing them.  Either way, I was quite satisfied with the results.

After quite a bit of scrubbing, The models came out quite clean, actually much cleaner than I had anticipated.  The advantages to using Turpenoid is that is has a very mild odor, so it can be done indoors, on a cold day, with the windows closed.  Also, it is less powerful than paint thinner, making it safer to use, and safe on plastic.  The models did not seem effected at all by the Turpenoid, other than the fact that they lost their paint!  The plastic did not seem to weaken any or react at all to the Turpenoid.  While it may take a bit of work to scrub all the paint off and have a clean model, I think it was worth it for the results.  I still have one more car to remove the paint from, and I intend to do it the same way.  I just need to buy more Turpenoid!

Picking the Right Paint Color

You want a locomotive for a specific railroad, but nobody makes it, so you have to paint your own.  First, you need to match the paint.  You ask the guys at the club, and they tell you a paint color.  You contact the railroad's historical society, and they tell you another paint color.  You find someone who used to work for the railroad, and he tells you a third paint color.  Finally, you go to a paint specialist, and you wind up with a fourth paint color.  Each person claims that his paint color is a perfect match to what the railroad used, and don't use a different color.  Now you are even more confused than you were before.  But here's the catch:  They are all wrong.

First of all, let's take a look at how color works.  When you look at an object, the color you see is the color reflected off the object's surface.  If the object is blue, then all the other visible light wavelengths hit the object and are absorbed, but the specific wavelength for the color of that object is reflected back and that is the color you see.  However, there are factors that affect the way it appears.  Different colors of light can change the color of the object, as well as the angle the light hits the object and the angle that you view the object.  If you compare two photos of the same locomotive taken at the same time on different days, one sunny day and one cloudy day, the color of that locomotive will appear different in both photos because the color of the light hitting it is different.  If you compare the color of the different surfaces on the same locomotive, the colors will also appear different, because you are looking at them from different angles.

More specific to trains, there are other factors that affect the way a color looks to our eyes.  A locomotive that was repainted yesterday and a locomotive that has been out in the sun for 10 years will be different colors, even if they were painted from the same bucket of paint.  The sun fades the paint, making it look lighter over the years.  Dirt, rust, soot, and grime also affect the color of the locomotive, because no matter how hard you scrub the dirt off, there will always be some there.

Let's take a look at the models again.  Realistically, will anyone notice if the paint color you use is slightly different from the exact color the railroad used?  Yes, you say, but actually, even if you do track down the exact paint color, it will probably appear wrong if it were possible to notice such small differences.  What kind of lighting do you have in your train room?  How does it compare to outdoor lighting?  What angle do you view the trains on your layout?  How does it compare with watching real trains?  How long have your models been left out in the sun?  How much dirt has accumulated on them?  When you come right down to it, there is no such thing as an exact paint match, because even on the real railroad, two identical locomotives painted from the same paint bucket can appear different from each other.

Now I'll let you in on another secret.  When selecting a paint color for my fictional railroad, the Merrimack & Souhegan Railroad, I bought a can of dark blue spray paint at Walmart because it was cheap and I liked the color.  As it turns out, it is a good match for Pan Am Railways locomotives, and I have used it to paint one of their engines.  My friend John also uses the same Walmart spray can to model CSX and Baltimore & Ohio locomotives.  I haven't modeled any, but it could probably be used for Alaska Railroad blue and Santa Fe freight warbonnet blue.  The truth is, manufacturers don't want to buy unique paint colors for specific railroads, so they will reuse the same color on other railroads.  Just because the paint bottle is labeled "Reading Green" doesn't mean you can't use it for a different railroad, because in real life, someone probably did.  In fact, I use Reading Green for corrugated steel warehouses and wooden window frames.

What it comes down to is this:  The only perfect match you can get is among your own models.  If you use a specific paint color for one locomotive, use that same one on the next locomotive you paint.  Nobody, not even that guy from the historical society or the paint specialist, will notice the slight difference between your models and the real thing.  However, if you use slightly different paints on different models that are supposed to be identical, most people will notice that.  So don't fret about matching the paint on your models to the paint on the real thing, the biggest concern here is matching the paint on your models to the paint on your other models.