I've learned a lot about stripping in the last few days.  Now I want to ask about painting.

For various reasons, I have not had a completed resin car to paint since I ran out of Floquil.  Now I have several that are almost ready to paint.  I'm also between airbrushes, so I've been doing painting of trucks and couplers, and other odd pieces, with rattle cans of Testors (pretty much black only), and with Scalecoat II.  I'm satisfied with the behavior of the Scalecoat, so I'm about ready to paint a few resin cars (so far, just Sunshine).

I've always washed the Sunshine parts with warm soapy water, and sanded all the surfaces to be cemented with ACC or sometimes given them a good knife scraping so I have good clean surfaces for the cementing.  Nothing has come apart.  I've painted twenty or thirty cars with Floquil, and have not had any problems with adhesion except for one spot on a running board, and that could have been mechanical damage.  I'm not equipped to do any blasting.

So I'm about to do some painting of complete cars with Scalecoat II in cans.  I'm perfectly capable of wiping doen the surfaces with 91% alcohol, and I think I did that with some cars that I airbrushed with Floquil.  Are there any other things I should do to minimize the risk of paint debonding?

I have a few gons to paint first, and I have sometimes given the interior a coating of rail brown or similar, with an exterior paint color on the exterior and the top bulb angles.  Should I expect any issues with masking tape? 

Any other advice?

Ron Merrick 

Lots of STMFCs in this one. I especially like the two rebuilt tank cars in the opening sequence. Not sure if the link will work: it's on YouTube.

Al Brown, Melbourne, Fla.

Freight Train (1954)

			Freight Train (1954) Shows how the cars in a freight train are scheduled, inspected and assembled. Follows the fast freight number 40 on its journey from Kansas City to Chicago. ...
			View on www.youtube.com	Preview by Yahoo

Friends,

I use Duco regularly to dress the ends of the fletches on my arrows so they don't rise up and tear off the shaft. I'm using it more for model building these days as well. Holds very well. I order mine from American Science and Surplus (on line or from their paper catalog) in a two for the price of one deal.

Yours Aye,

Garth

I am actually getting to like this stuff - a little has a lot of adhesion.

A big glob dries to a thin layer. it's fast drying (mixed blessing).

I usually put a glob down on a piece of wax paper (it doesn't level), pass the part to be glued in it and wipe off the excess.

Dried Duco seems to be more flexible than old Ambroid.

I am still building Quality Craft cabooses and I came across an interesting technique for building roof walks. I drag a Tichy wire through the Duco and place it between 2 roof walk boards. Getting it out is a chore but if the entire assembly is held in place by under braces and is long enough, I just cut the portion with wire spacers away.

The grab irons look nice too using Yarmouth eye bolts. I make the side grab irons out of the soft wire in the kit, bending it around coins.

ed mines

Jim,

To add to Steve's comments.  The X31 series (X31, X31A, X31B, X31C), when built, pushed the limits of the eastern clearance diagrams.  For that reason, the grab irons on the roof were inset into pockets in the roof to make the clearances.  Fast forward to the early days of WWII, when, as Steve says, bumping the roof on the X31 allowed it to hold more vehicles (jeeps in particular) creating the X31F.  In the intervening years, the clearances had gotten bigger, although I am not sure that all of the east coast clearances could accommodate the X31F.  That would not have been necessary though, as the cars, at least as built, were designed for specific cargos on specific routes. 

Now, about the interesting "step" in the roof.  It gets even more interesting that you may know, because the cars were equipped with Evans automobile loaders, which had visible external hardware on the ends of the cars.  Typically, that hardware is at nearly the highest point, as it is a pivot point for the loader to swing up into storage.  IF you were building the X31F to optimize space, both with loaders in use and stored, then the stepped roof would be a big no-no, since the stored loader would be well under the high roof sections.​  The location would NOT affect the loaders when loaded.  Now comes my speculation.  Why did they build the stepped roof?  Expedience and frugality.  The PRR could keep the ends of the cars and all the safety appliances exactly the same by only raising the center of the roof.  This would have reduced the time, materials (remember, steel is scarce in war!) and expense of the modification. The car retained the same capacity as an X31 with the loaders stored (as confirmed by a quick check of the ORER), but had lots of extra capacity with the loaders in use and these cars were in dedicated service, so not much use was planned without the loaders.  If the car was built new, it would have made more sense to build the roof all at the same height, hence the reason the "design" was not "adopted".  Note that the X31Fs lost their loaders after WWII when even bigger cars eclipsed their capacity.

Regards

Bruce Smith

Auburn, AL