A Locomotive weathering, a Continous project

[TLOC]

Fellow weathering enthusiasts or bored looking for something different! Welcome aboard.

I have a MP15ac HO scale Athearn Genesis that needs some dirtying up. This will be different for me.

1st thing is to remove the body from the chassis as this is a rough runner and cleaning out and re-lubing didn’t help. So while the body is off the drive train will get disassembled, cleaned up, feeders soldered to the pickup and hopefully add some ditchlights that currently are on backorder.

The CP lettering and numbers will go. The white sill stripe will stay and the red body shall be faded without I hope breaking any of the fragile railings.

Online tonight I was looking for a protptype picture of a medium dirty MP15ac. I prefer to weather off a sample picture to keep me focused. No picture of a sample seems to lead me into almost but not quite the “rust bucket” mode. Road names didn’t matter except it could not be one of the Soo Lines “bandits.” Never excepted to find thousands of pictures on 3 photo sites of such a clean locomotive. These samples are actually the dirtiest MP15ac’s I could locate, minus “bandits.”

Each picture has the photographer name listed. While not one is the ideal picture to work from, the dirt (up 1420) or rust (csx pic) are there.

A diesel tank picture, (up 1420, and Milw #444) the fade of the red and a patch of rust in the upper front of one. I can work with these.

Once the weathering is complete, hopefully the LED’s for ditchlights will have arrived

Please follow along as this may become interesting. Also, your comments push me to complete a project


TomO

 

[TLOC]

Got the lettering off the nose and 2 sides. I left the number boards and the numbers along the cab sides.

I thought I was doing something wrong removing the lettering. I did the engineer side on Thursday and conductor side today. The red Micro-Sol wasn’t as simple as You Tube shows it to be. Finally took a soft pencil eraser and the lettering came off. I dislike the Athearn Genesis railings and have thought even before this project of making my own. Maybe down the road but I hopefully can straighten out what you see above. Decals maybe tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in!

TomO

 

[Greg@mnrr]

TomO: I found that on some lettering on Athearn products, a 71% or 90% alcohol will remove the lettering just using a Q Tip.

Try it in a area first and let dry to see if the alcohol did and discoloration to the locomotives shell.

Greg

 

[TLOC]

TomO: I found that on some lettering on Athearn products, a 71% or 90% alcohol will remove the lettering just using a Q Tip.

Try it in a area first and let dry to see if the alcohol did and discoloration to the locomotives shell.

Greg

Greg, this is a Athearn product but in the Genesis line. The Isopropyl Alcohol in any % didn’t work for me.

TomO

 

[TLOC]

Todays adventure was running the loco! It barely moves on the test track which is squeaky clean. On the programing track it moves ok but something is wrong. So disassembled the unit. Pulled the trucks apart and cleaned up everything.

Leaving for the grandson’s last hockey game of the season. I will solder the pickups when we get back after dinner out again tonight. Assemble again and test before adding the sound decoder and speaker.

TomO

 

[CambriaArea51]

Some weathering inspiration.

 

[TLOC]

Thanks Tom, those units look just right. I haven’t even looked at the red MP15ac since the last post. Hopefully when I get back to the train room in mid-April

TomO

 

[CambriaArea51]

BNSF 6179 done. After looking at a picture on RR photo archives I found one that was take on 3/11/2022 and looked like it just was washed The only thing that had some dirt on them were the screens in the back Even then you could see some orange through the dirt as it was somewhat clean. That's how I'm doing this with a very light coat of dull to knock down the shine a bit.