Cotton Brute Restoration 4

 By far the most difficult part of this restoration is matching the paint.

This week I have been a bit busy on other things (really, all this working for a living is interfering with my train time. It must stop, I say) so I haven't been able to get a great deal done. I did have the goal, however, of getting rid of the humpback appearance in the shell.

To that end I ordered a Sand-It from Micro Mark (one of the beneficial side effects of doing this project is I can justify getting tools to The Management) and when it came in I carefully disassembled the body at the splice points, built a jig to hold the parts square, and squared the ends up.

The results were satisfactory, except for one simple thing...the body, once reassembled, was too short to fit the frame. I had expected this, so the next step was to build some shims. I decided to put one shim in at each body join to prevent a large and overly-noticeable splice point at one spot, and also to restore a bit of detail in the roof vents.

The first step was to glue the rear body half to a thin piece of .010" styrene. I used a piece of the weight to keep the sides straight and at the proper width all the way down, and when the glue had completely dried I carved the sheet out to the profile of the inside of the shell.

The two halves were then glued together, once more using the weight piece to keep everything nice and aligned, and then I repeated the process for the end of the shell.

The end cap was then glued on, the splices shaped with various filing, cutting and sanding tools, and the whole thing test fitted onto the frame. It fit perfectly once more, and best of all, no more whale imitations.

Now comes the tedious process of paint matching. The Tamiya XF-24 Dark Gray is a very close match, but it is not quite there. It is too blue, and much to my surprise the original paint is slightly green.

I have tried mixing various paints I have on hand, but even though I get oh so close it still isn't right. I have been tempted to see if I can match the decal font and paint the whole thing, but I am going to try to find some olive drab green and make another attempt at paint matching.

I did discover by happy accident (I had to touch up a Burlington freight car and had it sitting beside the Brute to dry) that the red is Badger CB&Q Chinese Red, although the old paint is a bit weathered. Fortunately the red doesn't need any work, but if it does a quick shot of Dullcote over it will tone the new paint down to match the old (verified on the boxcar).

As a final note, I said in my last post that I should take some pictures of the conductors steps, and so I have.

 

Building the steps out of styrene worked better than I expected, actually. I think they turned out pretty well.