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!

A Little Tour

Today being Wednesday, I would normally reserve this post for some stories from work.  However, nothing particularly unusual has happened at work this week, so I thought I would use this post for something else.

Steven and I have both made references to various model railroad ideas and equipment that we own, and we have even posted pictures in the past.  We have never really talked about any current projects though, which we thought might be interesting.  Usually both oh us have about a dozen things going on at one time, and the work bench is often more cluttered than makes sense, but I suppose that is probably not unique to either of us!

Below is a video clip I took today, it is about sixteen minutes long, and it is just a tour of my work bench.  I figured reading most of my posts takes as long as the video lasts.  In the video you will see some of my current projects, a finished project, and a small part of my equipment.  It is totally unscripted, just my thoughts as they occurred to me during filming.  Anyway, enjoy the switch from the normal programming.



As usual, if you have any questions about what you see, feel free to leave a comment.  You can also send us an email at ogden.bros.trains@gmail.com, or you can email me directly at james@ogdenbrotherstrains.com.  Next week, we will go back to our regular scheduled programming, probably.

Weathering a Covered Hopper

Over the weekend, I tried some weathering techniques published in the April 2011 issue of Model Railroader. I'm not claiming any of these techniques as my own, because they aren't, but I do want to share how I weathered an Athearn covered hopper car. I did not take a photo of the car before I started, but you can find the Athearn stock photo of it here. I am also uploading these photos and others to a Facebook album, viewable here.

I started by airbrushing the car to be a little dirty. I wanted more rust than dirt, so I kept the dirt pretty light. I used Polly Scale Railroad Tie Brown, thinned 1 part paint to 9 parts isopropyl alcohol. This will give the car a very light coat of paint. Don't try to put all the dirt on all at once, it's best to do several thin layers of paint rather than one thick layer. It's a good idea to fade the paint before making it dirty. Do this by using a light gray or a white paint. I skipped this step since I was using a light colored car and I figured fading wouldn't have any affect, but looking back I wish I had done it because the lettering is not faded at all. It is also a good idea to bring the car back to your railroad room between coats of paint and see how it looks under railroad lighting. If you're anything like me, I was painting in a room with very different lighting than the railroad room. The lighting will affect how the car looks. Finally, when you're done painting, make sure you clean your airbrush. Any paint left over in the airbrush will gum it up, making it harder to paint next time. I was using an acrylic paint, so I filled the bottle with water and shot the whole bottle out of the airbrush to clean it. Use a paint thinner for enamel paints.

Next I put reflectors on the sides of the car. These became mandatory a few years ago, and they started showing up on railroad cars all over the place. There are very few cars now that do not have them, but they are still out there. Since they are pretty generic, I did not look up prototype photos to see what pattern they were placed on the real thing, because chances are they are all different anyway. I used Highball Graphics decals, and just arranged them in a uniform pattern across the car. The reason I did not do this first is because the car has a build date of 1990, and the reflectors would have been added much later. Most of the dirt on the car would not be on the reflectors, and I wanted them to look newer than the rest of the car.

Finally, I rusted the car. I wanted it to be a bit rusty from 20 years of use, but not so rusty that it is no longer recognizable. I achieved that by using burnt sienna oil paint. These paints are expensive, but you use so little of it that one tube will last you quite a while. I took a piece of wire and used it to spread paint along the top seam of the car and random spots on the side of the car. I let the paint dry for two hours and then came back to finish up. I took a paintbrush that fit between two of the exterior posts and dipped it in turpenoid, which is a paint thinner for oil paints. Starting at the top of the car, I pulled the color down the side of the car with the paintbrush. This streaks the rust in the same way that rain does on the real thing. I did this on all four sides of the car. It is possible to do this with the car standing up, but I would not recommend doing all four sides at once, because then you don't have any dry areas on the car to handle it with. Finally, I did the same thing on the roof. Keep in mind that the roof walks and the hatches don't get as must rust as the rest of the roof, because people walk on the walkways and the hatches get replaced as they wear out. I kept the rust in those areas lighter than on the rest of the roof, but I did put a little rust on them.

After letting the rust dry, I took a hobby knife and scraped off excess paint from small areas such as grab irons and posts and wheels. While heavy rust is realistic, globs of paint sticking out from the side of the car is not! After doing this, I sprayed the car with dullcoat to seal everything together and to get rid of the shiny sheen. Then I installed a pair of type E couplers from Sergent Engineering and put the car on the railroad. Here is a photo of the finished car:

DCC and Lighting Upgrades

(James)

I recently completed an upgrade project with one of my locomotives.  When I say recently, I mean this morning.

Several weeks ago I acquired an Athearn F59PHI, in the Amtrak Cascades paint scheme.  This is a 2001 model, and so it did not come with Digital Command Control (DCC), or even as a "DCC Ready" model.  Seeing as I just got a DCC system up and running for my trains, I wanted to upgrade the model so it could be operated on DCC.  With "DCC Ready" models, there is usually a printed circuit board inside the model, with some sort of plug where a DCC decoder can easily be added.  The National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) has standardized DCC to some extent, and so most "DCC Ready" locomotives either come with an eight pin plug or a nine pin harness for the decoders.  It is quite simple to install them, as they only need to be plugged in and programmed and then everything is ready to go.

When a locomotive is not "DCC Ready," it can be a bit more involved to get a decoder inside it.  That is what this project was.  This was a very basic Athearn locomotive, with no wiring.  The electricity traveled from the trucks via metal tabs to the motor and the headlight.  The light and the motor were both grounded to the frame, which in turn was grounded through the trucks.  The headlight was simply a light bulb cradled in a metal post, bolted to the frame.  There really was not much to it, but it made the locomotive very simple and easy to work on.  Adding DCC required a few things though.  Since DCC requires all the electricity to be routed through a decoder, the motor and headlight would need to be electrically isolated from the frame of the locomotive.    Those metal tabs were removed, and electrical tape was placed along the frame, beneath the motor, so there would be something between it and the frame.  Leads were soldered from the decoder socket to the motor commutators and to the frame and trucks.  I chose to use a nine pin socket so I could remove the decoder if needed.  All the wires are color coded, and the color code is something else that is standardized by the NMRA.  That color code is the same regardless of who makes the decoder or the locomotive.

Once the motor was isolated from the frame and connected to the decoder harness, it was time to think about lighting.  This locomotive had one light bulb in it originally, which was on regardless of the direction the locomotive was going.  It lit the headlight and the cab windows.  I decided I wanted directional lighting, if nothing else.  Basically, when the locomotive would be moving forward, I wanted the headlights on, and in reverse I wanted the rear headlight on.  Since I had several headlights lying around from a different, simpler DCC upgrade, I decided to just use those.  As I was trying to figure out how to mount the headlights, I discovered that they fit perfectly into the holes that the light was supposed to shine through!  I figured putting a light bulb in each of those holes would be the easiest way to do it.  That's how they really do it anyway!  Since I was doing that, I figured adding marker lights, and programming them to operate in reverse, would not be that much more difficult.  I glued the headlights in place and then began wiring for that.  In all, seven light bulbs were added.  Two main headlights were placed in the center of the nose, and two ditch lights in the lower corners.  I also installed two red marker lights on the front of the locomotive, and a single headlight in the rear.

Once everything was in place, I tested it before I soldered anything.  The first good thing was that the locomotive moved in the right direction when I told it to do that.  Next was the lights.  I tested all the headlights and marker lights, and those seemed to work fine.  Since I had not actually programmed the decoder up to this point, the ditch lights acted a little funny, but they did operate.  Once all that check out, I programmed the decoder.  Since it was locomotive #468, that is the address it got.  I looked through the instructions on how to program the ditch lights to work with the headlights.  Once I got through that programming, they operated the way they should.  Once everything was programmed and operating as expected, I took the locomotive back to the workbench and soldered all the electrical connections.  I placed a bit of electrical tape over each connection to prevent short circuits inside the locomotive.

The next step was to put the locomotive back together.  This is a locomotive which once had no wiring in it at all.  After all that, there was quite a bit of wiring, and a decoder to cram in there.  It was getting pretty crowded!  That proved to be a bit more challenging than I had anticipated, but taping some of the excess wire in place did help.  Once everything had been reassembled, it was time for one more test, just to make sure I had not damaged anything as I was trying to cram it into the locomotive.  Everything worked.  To prevent light leaks, I added some putty for hanging posters around the back of the light bulbs, on the inside of the locomotive.  It was easy to install, and easy to form around the light bulb and seal the light out.

For anyone trying to upgrade a locomotive, here are a few reference items for you.
Red wire: Right (Engineer) side electrical pickup
Black wire: Left (Conductor/Fireman) side electrical pickup
Orange wire: This goes to the motor, where the right side pickup went.
Grey wire: This goes to the motor, where the left side pickup went.
Blue wire: Common wire for all lights.  If you use LED's, this goes to the positive side.  Make sure you install LED's correctly or they will not work.
White wire: This goes to the headlight.  If you use LED's, this goes to the negative side.
Yellow wire: This goes to the rear headlight.  If you use LED's, this goes to the negative side.  I also used it for wiring the marker lights, since I wanted them to come on in reverse.
Purple wire: This is a function wire.  Not all decoders have it.  If you are wiring ditch lights, wire this to the left side.  For LED ditch lights, this goes to the negative side of the LED.
Green wire: This is a function wire.  Not all decoders have it.  If you are wiring ditch lights, wire this to the right side.  For LED ditch lights, this goes to the negative side of the LED.

When you wire light bulbs, make sure you check the rated voltage and amperage.  You can operate 12 volt bulbs with no resistors, but there are also 1.5 volt bulbs out there and various LED's.  Light bulbs will explode if you let too much voltage through them, so make sure you use resistors if needed!  The amperage is also important, although the results are a little less drastic!  I used 30 milliamp, or 0.03 amp bulbs.  You want to watch these numbers so you do not fry a decoder.  They fry if there are too many amps.  Typically, on one function, you do not want more than 100 milliamps, or 0.1 amps.  In wiring my headlights, I had multiple light bulbs on each function, but I stayed under 100 milliamps.  On the white wire, I had two light bulbs, or 60 milliamps.  The green and purple wires both had one bulb, for 30 milliamps each.  The yellow wire had three lights on it.  The rear headlight and two marker lights were all on that one, for a total of 90 milliamps.  Make sure you are conscious of this so you do not overload your decoder.  The results could be fatal for it!

Now that the project is complete, I am a lot more aware of how DCC is wired.  I am by no means a professional, but it was a leap I had to take.  I was quite nervous about pulling apart a locomotive and rewiring everything.  It is not nearly as hard as I imagined it would be.  If you are nervous about taking the plunge and upgrading to DCC the hard way, I would recommend you start with an Athearn locomotive.  Since they are so basic and simple to start with, it makes life a lot easier when you go to upgrade.   They are very simple, and easy to understand, and they generally have a bit of space to work with inside them.  If it is the soldering that worries you, get some wire and practice a bit first.  It also helps if you have a 30 watt or less soldering iron and the thinnest solder you can find.  Another useful tool for troubleshooting is a multimeter.  It will tell you easily if you have isolated everything properly, and what is connected and what is not.  Once you do it once, you will not be nervous about it in the future.  Even on different locomotives, the principles are all the same, and you'll be able to do it again.

Programming can be a whole different beast, and we will cover that in a future installment.

For pictures of the project, check out our Facebook photo album.