April Project Month - Parts4-6: Misc SOU/SCL Diesel Jobs

I forgot to get photos of these 3 projects before I left:

• SCL FT units (no photos)
• SOU F3 paint touch-ups (no photos)
• SOU SD9 (Of course MTH announces one as I finished this one...no photos)

My dad had bought an ABA set of ACL FT units.  Despite never having had them, he wanted them SCL.  I went ahead and used F3/F7 units as my guides.  I first removed all window material/port lenses for proper decal prep.  I carefully sanded off the ACL lettering and repainted the area with black paint.  After the glosscote, it is hard to tell that the area was ever touched.  I then added the SCL lettering, the SCL logo under the cab windows, and the SCL herald on the nose.  The only bad part is that the herald yellow does not match the yellow MTH chose.  Bummer.  Maybe a 5-6 hour due to the careful sanding of the ACL lettering, to ensure nothing else was removed.




My dad had some MTH F3 units that had some paint scratches on the edges of the green on the units.  The tru-color green is a good match.  A quick little hour job spread over two or three passes.  I would suggest getting the flat-paintable version, as it did go on a little glossier than the existing paint, but luckily it was just small paint nicks and passable.




The SOU SD9 was a complete repaint from a pretty old Protosound2 C&O unit.  No super-detailing at all.  These units are too crude to warrant any more than a repaint job from me IMHO.  The paint on these was on good.  I wish I had a sandblaster for this particular one, but oh well.  Lots of time in the 91% isopropyl and a toothbrush got the job done.  The experiment of gloss black was tried on this guy too, but won't do that again.  I looked at pictures and decided to use unit 204W as my guide. (Which is good in case my dad wants to get the newly catalogued 202 unit.) 

Hardest part on this one is the imitation aluminum striping.  I noticed the new microscale decal sets do not use the striping, but rather just giving you the gold stripes and force you to paint the imitation aluminum stripes.  Probably a good idea, and will pick up tru-color for that.  Laying the stripes is a real PITA because there are louvers and door handles that make it hard to lay the decals, requiring lots of layers of microsol, and poking with an X-acto knife.  Where the decal didn't lay right, I had some paint that I was able to use to fix any problems in the stripe.  Final product came out well. I don't know the hour estimate, but it was a lot due to the paint stripping and the stripe application. Probably 10 hours.