Model Railroading > CR 5044 Rapido B36-7

Always enjoying seeing pictures of what everyone has finished up and I haven't posted any pictures in a while. Here are a couple shots of a Rapido B36-7 that I finished up recently. It's a factory painted unit that I renumbered, did it for a buddy of mine who had shot the real 5044 a number of times, didn't realize until I went looking for more shots of it that it was the Ricky Gates loco.

The factory numbers came off really clean after a 15 minute soak in Solvaset soaked paper towel and no harm was done to the base paint. I used the Microscale Conrail GE set for the new numbers on the cab sides. The numberboards are painted on the backside from the factory, I pulled them out and cleaned them off using more solvaset and a fresh Xacto for a few stubborn spots. The new numbers came from a BNSF H1 Dash 9 set from Microscale, I thought they looked better size wise than the numbers on the Conrail set. I applied them in the same fashion as the factory paint by putting them on the backside of the numberboard and then painting the black on top to seal them. When the B36's were in their prime on the trailer trains they seemed to turn into real pigs with large bow waves of dirt on their flanks, that was not the look I wanted to for the model. Luckily it seems as though they also occasionally cleaned the real ones, but the crud still hung in the step wells even though the flanks were fairly clean. To capture that look I used a combination of some washes with artist's oils, mainly to get in the hood door recesses. Some light airbrushing to knock the edge off of everything, the grills in the back were masked and painted with a crud black. Finally some weathering powders were used mainly in the step wells and on the underframe where the dirt collects in the nooks and crannies. Everything was sealed up with some dull coat. 

Pictures all taken outside in natural sunlight. The SD40-2 in the shots is built from a Kato with a new Cannon nose and radiators and Athearn Flexicoil sideframes modified to fit the Kato trucks. I built it right after the Kato 40-2's came out in 2000. I also loved seeing the Consolidated Freightways pup trailers back in the Conrail days so a load of them was a must for a trailer hustling GE!

Enjoy the pics and hope everyone has some more models to share!

Scooter 

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Looks great, Scooter!

WOW! That looks amazing!

-Jason

If these photos were not posted on the Model Railroad Board I would think they were the real thing.

Robert Morris
Dunsmuir, CA
Robert Morris Photography

photobob Wrote:
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> If these photos were not posted on the Model
> Railroad Board I would think they were the real
> thing.

Agreed!  These CR photo's are right up there with Onondaga Cut-off!

 Very nice work! You stated that you used Solvaset to remove the lettering? I've used Microscale's Microsol many times in the past but never tried Solvaset!

rapidotrains Wrote:
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> WOW! That looks amazing!
>
> -Jason

Thanks guys! And thanks Jason, you definitely made it a lot easier starting point!

Scooter

Posted from iPhone

Looks good Scooter. What did u use to blacken the grills?

Thanks Bruce 

brfriedm Wrote:
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> What did u use to blacken the
> grills?
>

Thanks Bruce. First thing I did was to mask off the grills and airbrush them with some grimy black. Then they got a wash with some almost black artists oils. This was followed by some dusting of a weathering gray with the airbrush, which was shot over pretty much the entire body. Finally a little black and dark earth weathering powders were mixed together and dusted on them with a small brush.

Scooter

Posted from iPhone

Wow, great job!

Posted from iPhone

Great phots - can't beat natural light. The B36 looks fabulous. Waiting for them to arrive here in the UK. Chris uk.

Great work on these!

- Jeff Carlson

Beautiful work, and great photography too.  Well done!

~RGDave
https://onondagacutoff.blogspot.com/