some nice work, nice to see a step by step too. out of interest why are you turning the rear truck around?
He likes to get the prototype "see through" look at the rear grills by moving the gear tower forward. Here is one that he did about 6 years ago. I was impressed.
That is really, really, really nasty weathering. Also see what you mean about the see-through rear grills. I had to look twice to make sure it was not a prototype photo. All in all outstanding!
We used to call that the "Desert Storm" paint scheme. Going through my old slides I actually found the prototype locomotive that I photographed in Stafford, Texas in February of 1996.
I cannot help thinking the paint preparation was deficient, or that this was a primer failure similar to what we saw on many automobiles of similar era.
The story that I was told was that these locomotives were painted in California with all their stringent environmental regulations like restrictions on solvent based paints. So maybe it was latex?
Probably just about as good as latex.... Those primers would fail in a fashion which left only their pigment. When the color coat paint would peel, what you would see underneath could simply be wiped away. If you rubbed a finger in it, there came away a kind of heavy dust, which you could wash off your hands with soap and water. The color had nothing but dust to stick onto. The result was any area needed to be cleared down to bare metal, as touching up was impossible. And was often re-done with a solvent based paints, which had much better bonding ability. They have improved this greatly, several decades later.....
I follow, I didn't know whether it was something unique to the SP prototype that the truck side frames or something were reversed etc Thank you for the clarity!
