Quick Reviews:
The MTH caboose, after you look past the poor-looking trucks (they have used this for over a decade), are rather nice. They did a pretty good job on this one, but are missing a lot of the finer small text that would have been along the sill, etc. The MTH SD45's are really good plastic models...however MTH's paint job is rather atrocious, but my dad wanted to keep them anyway. I would have returned them to make a point to MTH to step up their QA. If they don't have the expertise to do it themselves, they need to borrow modelers that care to review their pilot samples, etc.
MTH screwed up:
- the font of the numbers on the numberboards
- the size of the numbers on the side of the cab
- the spacing of the yellow stripes (which I think led to the cab number size problem)
- the headlight housing being silver...this may be true for one or two units, but most photos I see in the early 1970's are BLACK
- Incorrect horn, leaving the modeler to dish out $16 to build a Des Plaines Hobbies brass kit
- Shades of black, silver, and yellow
- overall body accuracy
- additional MU box located above the pilots
I weathered the trucks/pilots/fuel tanks with an airbrush and pan pastels. My dad wanted lighter bodies, so I pan pasteled the bodies all over with light tan color as per prototype photo's found online. These photo's also showed that these units had plows on the front, so I weathered the plows and added them on when I was done. Yes, the numberboards are missing. More on that below.
The caboose got roughly the same color treatment along the sill, underframe, trucks, and couplers. I did paint the air hose glad hands and angle cocks silver. I painted all wheelfaces roof brown.
As a side note, I did adjust the camera light sensitivity to make it easier to see the pan pastel dusting on the shells. Weathering is more subtle IRL.
(And I will remind non-blog users - clicking images results in hi-res photos)
Group Shot
Front Angle Shot
Side Angle Shot
Caboose Shot
My makeshift spray booth...
Fixing the cab numbers is more work than its worth, considering I'd probably have to repaint each locomotive entirely to make it harder to tell that I changed the numbers. It may have resulted in redoing the yellow striping too. The numberboards are much easier to fix, but took longer to do, so I mailed them to my dad after he had left. Luckily the microscale numbers fit the numberboards. They do, however, have to be cut out individually and put into place as the microscale spacing is not correct as is (per prototype photo).
Just some modeling in action: Individually cut numbers. Sanded off numberboards, which were then repainted with a thin coat of white and glosscoted. See the arrows? The back of the boards have angled plastic so that they fit in a specific way. I had to keep track of this to make sure the numbers went on correctly so when put back into the shell, they remain rightside up.
Note 1: There are two sizes of numberboards, one for the front and one for the rear. I didn't realize this until I decaled the first one and used it as a template to do the second one and saw the slight size difference.
Note 2: Also apparently never take a macro photo of microscale decals...you can see all of the microscopic flaws that we cannot see easily with our eyes at even the 1" distance.
Note 3: Picture is before final glosscote layer after decal placement, thus easy to see decal lines.
Here is how the prototype, MTH, and my numberboards compare. MTH needs better quality control. This is pretty ridiculous. They used the same sad front on my Southern F7s from a few years ago too. It appears they just don't care anymore.
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