The lead photo is from the July/August 2022 issue of Classic Toy Trains magazine. It depicts a PostWar Lionel prototype of a Western Pacific GP-9.
As soon as I saw the picture, I knew that I had to recreate it!
I thought that I'd document how I did here.
I don't like to fiddle with nice, original, Post War trains - It took several months to find a suitable donor candidate. The one I found was operationally perfect, light battery damage to a small part of the chassis, no damage to any of the internals, heavily repainted cab - PERFECT for my purposes!
Here is what I started with:
First I soaked the body in hot water with powdered Tide laundry detergent for 24 hours.
A couple side notes,
*Liquid Tide laundry detergent does not work for this purpose,
*If this was tinplate, I would have made the water as hot as possible, close to boiling, and all of the paint would have been removed in 8 hours or so. Can't do this with plastic as it would warp it.
After this 24 hour soaking, I discovered that under the thick black paint was a MPC Union Pacific body (the body is the same mold as the Post War GP-7, so this was not a problem).
Some brushing with a fingernail brush and the old repaint was no more. After burnishing it with a plastic scouring pad to make sure none of the original paint was loose, and a through rinse with clean water, this was the result:
After giving it some time to thoroughly dry, I gave the shell a light coat of primer.
On to the Chassis.
I lubed it and cleaned the brushes- it ran great. Then I thoroughly cleaned the frame with 70% alcohol to prepare it for a light coat of gray primer, its orange paint, and a coat of Testor's Dull Coat.
Back to the primed body.
I sprayed it orange and, after 48 hours of drying time, here it is masked and ready for the silver spray paint:
Next I designed and printed water-slide Ink-Jet decals:
After applying the decals, I gave it an overall coat of Testor's Dull Coat spray to eliminate the shine.
I then reinstalled the decorative horns and the front and back clear plastic marker light/window "glass".
Here is the finished (almost) product - still need to install wire handrails, they are on order.
Here it is, complete with handrails, pulling a string of 13 Lionel single dome Chemical tank cars. Bringing up the rear is the Western Pacific caboose I had earlier painted (see: One of a Kind Cabooses (Cabeese?) (warrenvillerailroad.com) for more on my custom cabeese projects).
Recreating a one-of-a-kind postwar prototype was a fun project!