WU road switchers circa 1955


Fishplate

Member
This week’s project: the first two diesels in my freelance paint scheme. Unit 3502 is a Kato RSC-2 and 2918 is an Atlas Train Master, both in N scale. Paint is a mix of equal parts Tarnished Black and Steam Power Black. Corner handrails on the Alco are Railbox Yellow. The custom decals are from Rail Graphics. Unfortunately, I neglected to use clear gloss before decaling, so there is some silvering under the decal film. Both engines have TCS drop-in decoders.
View attachment 15125

View attachment 15126
 
looking good. you might be able to get water mixed with some gloss under the film and reseal it.. depends if you have alot of gloss over them now..

Trent
 
Nice paint scheme. Anything that looks like the NKP is good. :) As far as the decals, if you use distilled water and lots of Solvaset, you really don't need to glosscoat most paint jobs. Most of the silvering you're seing is from minerals in your tap water.
 
I did use distilled water and both Microscale setting solutions. I've had good luck applying decals over Polly Scale paint in the past; not sure why it gave me trouble this time.
 
Odd. Did you wash the body in distilled water before applying the decals too? I've found that removes some of the impurities in paint that sometimes cause silvering. OTOH, I've done everything right and still get the same problem. I suspect it's a manufacturing problem with some decals.
 
Odd. Did you wash the body in distilled water before applying the decals too? I've found that removes some of the impurities in paint that sometimes cause silvering. OTOH, I've done everything right and still get the same problem. I suspect it's a manufacturing problem with some decals.

Jim, I have to disagree with you on this point. Decal silvering or ghosting is caused either by air behind the decals or using a flat finish. Putting a good coat of gloss-coat, finish etc. on before and after decaling will eliminate silvering or ghosting. My humble opinion and I'm sticking to it!! ;)
 
Jerome, I generally agree with you that a gloss finish will give you less chance of silvering but I've decaled flat finish models without problems too. There seems to be a relationship between the way some decals are made and silvering. Champ has way more problems with this than Microscale, for example. I think age is another problem. The older the decal, the harder it is to get is snuggled down and all the air out of it. We never know when we buy decals how long they've been sitting a hot warehouse. I will say that, since I've been using nothing but distilled water to wash the body and for applying the decals, I've gotten much better results than using tap water. That's my story and I'm sticking to it also. :D
 
After a bad experience 20 years ago, I've always applied a thin layer of glosscote to any surface painted with Floquil, PollyScale or any flat textured paint. This helps not only to minimize the chance of silvering, but also prevents the glossy decal film surface from contrasting with the surrounding flat finish of the untreated paint. I learned this when I tried to hide decals on a loco painted in Floquil Reefer Gray from a rattle can. Even though I literally drowned the thing in dullcote, that decal film just kept on shinin'.
 
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