A little diorama I threw together. The FA1 and FB1 were custom painted this past weekend using some old-school techniques including tape masking for all the stripes, not decals! Colors are all Tru-Color paint.. These locos came out well, and were a fun exercise in airbrush methods! Way better than painting 3x5 cards
Hello. Great paint job. Life Like units? The colors look dead on. Why did you find it necessary to paint the stripes? I have several waiting for paint, but have not had the time for such a challenging project. Again very nice! PS with Atlas purchasing the FA1 molds from Life Like I am hoping they finally do a SP&S covered wagon......
Thanks guys! So; the Life-Like 2nd gen had removable grills with the fan details recessed in the roof, allowing me to black the background and do a silver paint on the blades! Then pop-in the painted cap/screen and off we go! I decided to paint the stripes because on these units, all four stripes are on the rivet lines. UGH to decal-ing stripes on rivet lines, it's the worst thing to decal. So, I said 'I'm gonna go old school' and tried the masking. The colors came through super well, next time I'll use a higher quality tape than Tamiya so I can really get a razor's edge going. With my NP trains (Loewy and Pine Tree), it will be painfully necessary! I can paint in minutes what decals might take an hour plus cure time, and a bit of decal float/wander is nearly inevitable on those 85' cars... I'm jazzed that Atlas is taking on all the old LL tooling, and yeah a set of Atlas FA-2's would really cook my bacon! I'm a sucker for those giant numberboards... Oh, and North Bank? I happen to know a painter if you need one
Not so much. They don't have the 'razor's edge" it's really quite rough compared to a plastic tape like scotch or particular hobby tapes (Tamiya is honestly closer to blue painters' tape in its edge sharpness), but I'll be testing a few brands to get it dialed in and share my results
I am looking very forward to this as I haven't been the most happy with some recent paint jobs using the Tamiya tape. Any estimate as to when you might be testing these tapes?
Super nice masking and paint job. I found using good old cheapo masking tape, applied to a clean glass plate and cut with a fresh #11 blade to give passable results. I haven't painted a loco in close to 10 years, FWIW.
Give me a week or so! I took some videos on painting the loco, I just started this paint job again on a kato F7 shell which should come out nice
Nice work!! (but, to be honest, I was a whole lot more interested in your OUTSTANDING work on NCL equipment )
Just you wait! Sample white stripes on a Loewy NCL dome are coming this weekend! Getting back at that train with full interior lighting and paint/detail, DCC & Sound matching FP7 AB too....