More GO Transit, F40PH and GP40-2

[justGO]

Oct 21, 2015 13:07:57 GMT -5 Nick Lorusso said:

justGO
What era are you modeling?

I am doing mainly early 80's GO, not going much beyond once they got rid of the F40Ph's.

[Nick Lorusso]

I'm doing the same era in N-scale for CN.

[justGO]

well here's a bit of an update finally. With a bit of a break at work due to the holiday I've been able to start on my GP40's for GO transit. I'm making a second GP40-2w, a GP40, and two GP40tc. Most of these will be non-powered to operate at the opposite end of my train. Here's a look at where I'm at with them and a couple Bombardier cars I'm repainting as GO transit. Since the Athearn cars are discontinued and scarce I've been painting my own bi-levels.




One of the GP40tc's is from Shapeways, the other is one that I am kit bashing myself. since I haven't updated in a while here are some shots of some of my GO transit engines. Missing are my two other F40ph's, but the frame is still nice and full of GO. Happy Holidays!

[Deleted]

All that green must be an elf

Happy Holidays

[m a y o r 79]

Wow, nice collectn there.

[iomalley]

Dyin' to see that TC all painted up! How was the surface roughness of the print?

[justGO]

Dec 27, 2015 11:32:26 GMT -5 iomalley said:

Dyin' to see that TC all painted up! How was the surface roughness of the print?

the surface was pretty good, but it varied from area to area. I had to do a base coat of primer, and then sand, and then another coat of primer which seemed to get the areas reasonably smooth. I am doing both paint schemes, the regular hockey stick and the CN midnight blue as well. The Shapeways one is the version of the TC with not end walkway, there are also versions that have a porch on the back, I think those tend to be the midnight blue earlier version. It's hard to say there are limited photos and angles, but I think I can get two fairly solid versions finished.

[iomalley]

Oh yeah, that back porch came and went, even in the white/green scheme. I thought about building one now that trueline trains has the MP40...looks like the frame length might be close...in HO anyway...

[justGO]

Here's another update:
well I got some work, done on the painting and scratch built GP40tc. The painting is going to need a round of touch ups, my make ended up a little leaky here and there. I've come to expect this unfortunately, but it's part of the process for me lol. I need to straighten out some of the lines on my custom painted bi-levels, and then touch up the diesels here and there, but for the most part it all turned out ok. I also noticed my GP40 is missing the nose lights, so now I have to add that (ugh). Here are some shots of the green pass on the group:


And here is the GP40tc scratch build. Still a ways to go but I have the basic body assembled. I'm doing an early version for this one, it has the rear porch and clean lines more like the CN version. This one will be midnight blue when it's done.

hopefully I can get this close to finished this weekend, but I'm waiting on some parts for the final details.

[slowfreight]

You can ask Cargostar how hard it is to nail down a version on the TC's, but they're still one of my favorite oddballs.

Keep up the great work!

[justGO]

I've made a little progress on the "Tc". I'm waiting for some parts to come in and then I'll really be moving. It's a challenge to make the time to work on the model, and at the same time actually have the parts I need to do the work, but patience is required I guess. This is the kit bash tc the Shapeways one is in the paint shop, it's looking good, I'm about ready to paint the yellow and rails, then it's decal time. The kit bash is still being refined, I got the grilles added to the side, they are resin decals. Also I added the horn. Next up I need to add the rear vertical light and the nose light. But after that I think it's paint time so maybe by February I'll get this thing going.

I've got a couple side "GO" projects, and in-between working on the other round of GP40's I started painting my own Bombardier cars. These are just the good old Athearn Bombardier cars but GO transit is hard to come by, especially in "N" scale. This round was a set of Metrolink that I stripped and repainted, ironic since Metrolink actually did the reverse in real life. These cars have some custom decals that I made with Highball Graphics, and worked with Dave Laleme on the design. It's been a great experience getting these custom decals made, Dave really works with you to get it right, details, scale, everything. I saw this special car in a promotional photo fro Go transit. The "Get on the GO" promotional phrase was used for a while, I even have some buttons with the saying on it. I found the font they used on the cars, and the bombardier logo which was featured on the car as well. The 30th anniversary car should also have the bombardier logo on it, just in black, I'm not sure why Athearn did it the way they did with the GOT logo but it's still a nice car. Anyway I had a bunch of decals made so I made a few "Get on the GO" cars for fun, I made up the number series I have no idea which cars the stickers were actually on, or when. Here are some pics:


thats it for now, more on the way. Pretty soon I'll do a new thread with an overall GO update. I've got a friend working on the Hawker cab and coaches so thats on the horizon, maybe by the spring I'll get to those and finally be finished.

[slowfreight]

If you're working on the Hawker Siddeley cars, have you found any roof shots of their self-propelled cars? Still hunting them to help someone with another project.

[justGO]

Jan 15, 2016 23:51:38 GMT -5 slowfreight said:

If you're working on the Hawker Siddeley cars, have you found any roof shots of their self-propelled cars? Still hunting them to help someone with another project.

hey slow freight, I don't have a super detailed shot yet, though a back issue of TRAINS magazine has a decent look at one on the cover. I think I can sketch up a view and maybe it will make sense with what you know about these cars. I have not seen the work my friend has done on the car yet and since he's doing it on his own time I don't bug him much about it. Let me see if I can draw something up for discussion.

[iomalley]

It always amazes me how many bridges span over Toronto tracks, and no detailed shots of the top of the TCs or the DMUs have ever surfaced.

I guess when you were limited to 24 or 36 exposures, it seemed like a waste at the time.

[justGO]

Here's a little side project to all of my diesels. As I said before Athearn N scale GO transit Bombardier cars have become difficult to find and sometimes the auctions go crazy price wise. I've found it's cheaper to just buy some less popular road names and repaint them GO. This way there are some cars that are painted with the same Green as my diesels which is a little more yellow green (though not as accurate as I'd like) Anyway I found some variations on the cars, I'm not a big fan of the wrapped cars and I don't think they did those in the early eighties anyway. The top picture is of a slightly more accurate car, on the actual GO transit cars it says "GO transit" below the lower windows. Athearn put the Gov. of Ontario logo there which I've only ever seen  on one of the early demonstration models of the GO Bombardier cars. I had some custom decals made so I can do the "GO transit" version. Next is an odd car, I found an image of a car that had the slogan "Get on the GO" on the side. It's similar to the 30th anniversary car, the font is futura and I used microscope black line decals mixed with more custom decals made through Highball graphics and Dave Laleme. The car also had the Bombardier logo on the side, the green of the logo did not match he green on the car, thats the way it was in the photo so I followed that for the model as well. Finally the bottom car is the Athearn 30th anniv car with one modification. The actual car had the Bombardier logo on the side, not the Govt of Ont logo, so I gently sanded off the Athearn decal and replaced it with a custom Black and white Bombardier logo to match the prototype better. The diesels are all in the paint shop still. I'm debating a couple ways to paint the hand rails but I'm getting closer on the lot of them.

[justGO]

I've made a little more progress on the GP's. Everything is painted except for the grab irons and hand rails. For the plastic hand rails I am going to use Tamiya polycarbonate paint. I read on a thread somewhere that this was a good paint for plastic hand rails so I did a test and soaked a set of rails in 90% iso alcohol, then painted them with the polycarbonate paint. The paint is made for plastic RC cars so it is very flexible and the result is it will stay on the plastic hand rails without flaking off. Tamiya does not have a yellow that matches the GO transit yellow well so I am going to have to mix two of their yellows and then airbrush the paint onto the rails. Anyway here is the progress I made on the rails.

[m a y o r 79]

Love using the foam brushes to hold the shells, thats a great idea! May have to steal that one.

The paint jobs look great too.

[justGO]

slowly but surely these GP's are getting there. I had some time today so I got to do the decals and some of the hand rails. I highly recommend the Tamiya polycarbonate paint for the atlas plastic hand rails. The paint is really flexible it won't chip when the railings bend. It worked really well. The downside is that the colors are really limited, I had to mix two types of yellows to get the color close to the yellow I needed. Hopefully I can do a little more work on these soon and finish them off. I realized I had forgotten to add the nose lights to the GP40, so I had to go in and add it now. I hate working on stuff like that at this point but it would have bothered me not to do it.

[slowfreight]

Good catch on the headlight. I will eventually do the same to my factory-painted Atlas GP40. It's just not right without the bell and headlight.

It appears your GP40TC's have different length noses. The green one looks correct from what I recall of Cargostar's model on this board.

[justGO]

Just a quick update, I figured out some of the handrails but messed up the left side on one engine so I had to order more. I basically took two Atlas GP40 hand rail sets, cut them at the correct point, then did basically a tiny mitre cut on the connection behind the stanchion. I glued these pieces together with gorilla glue after lightly sanding them. Once the railing were connected I painted them with the Tamiya Polycarbonate red paint. This acted as a plastic coating and wrapped the two joints together for a more solid connection where I glued them. Then I just pressed them into place. Here is one update picture, getting near the end on the BLUE GP40tc, I still need to make brass hand rails for the GREEN one ugh! I also couldn't resist glueing the little "GO" plaque on the front. I think it's starting to look pretty good overall. The side "GO" decal I custom ordered hasn't arrived yet, probably will this week. Lots of small things to remember when finishing off these little diesels. I did check the nose length versus my prototype photo and the BLUE nose is accurate as I made it, when measuring it against the GREEN one it might be a tiny bit longer but not much. I have found the TC's have a wide variety, especially on the back end, and I did shorten the nose to match 603, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and a tiny ruler I guess, lol.