Post by shinobi on Nov 24, 2015 19:46:04 GMT -5
Hi everyone. 
So I recently got hold of one of these brand new for about $40 less than they're normally worth. Figured it'd be a good candidate for some basic enhancements and weathering. The GP15-1 is one of my favourite locomotives so I really enjoyed this one. It's painted in the late Conrail scheme, so this locomotive fits a late 90's era.
Here's how she looked straight out the box:
The most obvious flaw here is the blue steps/stepwells and the lack of white stepwell handrails. Less obvious is that the front stations are supposed to be deck-mounted, rather than mounted on the edge of the pilot, but it's not a big deal. Overall atlas have scored a home run with this one - the horn (a Nathan P3) and plows are exquisite.
First order of the day is to take the shell off the chassis. This being a DCC ready locomotive, the shell literally just pulls straight up off, with a little jiggling.
Here we can see a little bit better what we are up against in the stepwell area.
And this gives a good idea of the cab wall thickness visible through the windows.
Okay so that's enough photos of the toylike super-clean out of the box appearance. Let's get down to some disassembly!
I started by removing the frame from the hood, which is held on by some lugs. Then I removed the plows, and the walkways/handrails molding which was glued down to the frame using some kind of sticky non-drying glue stuff. As is completely standard with all my builds/projects, I managed to snap a lug off the hood.
Next up I removed the cab, where I broke another lug or two because as you can tell by now I'm hamfisted.
I popped out the glazing, and pulled the horn out of it's slots.
I started out with the main hood, painting all the grills black.
While the jar of black paint was open I moved on to the stepwells and walkways.
One of my favourite tricks for enhancing n scale locomotives is to paint the inside edge of the windows to disguise the wall thickness. Normally I'd also use a sharpie here to pick out the window gaskets, but Conrail actually painted the window gaskets on their GP15-1's the same blue as the rest of the carbody. This little job always makes my eyes go funny.
I also paint the cab interior black, which I find helps to assist with creating the illusion of a thinwall cab.
At this point I realised from looking at photographs of the prototype that the numberboard is surrounded by a rubber gasket. I picked this detail out using a sharpie, and then painted the hole to prevent any blue from showing up on the wrong sideo f the gasket. There's a couple little places where I accidentally got some paint on the outside walls of the cab while painting the windows - this is easily removed by gliding a sharp exacto over it creating a very crisp finish.
As I said earlier, Atlas' n scale Nathan P3 is exquisite (and tiny!) - I've seen brass aftermarket horns in HO that weren't this good. To do this detail part justice, I weathered it separately with the usual black soot that finds it's way into the bell mouths, and a liberal dusting of roof brown on the upper surfaces.
Next up I turned back to the handrails and added some white paint.
I picked out the class lights in silver. I'm not a huge fan of the molded-on grabs that Atlas is still using on their n-scale stuff, especially when they apply a transfer over it like this.
I always start the 'weathering' with the chassis, giving it a simple treatment of shades of browns and blacks.
I added some rust to the coupler, as well as the rust and dirt that tends to build up around the MU cables behind the plow.
The plows came up next, with a dose of dirt and rust.
I then weathered the walkways with some different shades of rusty and dirty browns.
Of course no weathered frame would be complete without some battery box grunge.
This stage is a little thing I like to call "crevice grime". I simply use a wash of dark brown to pick out the gaps between the hood doors, and to create streaks and splatters. It's pretty common on locomotives to see dirt that has been splashed by rain from the walkway up onto the the hood, which is what I'm referring to when I say "splatters". While I'm doing this I also start to fill up the grills with some dirt and rust.
Finally, I fired up the air compressor, masked off the roof vents, and shot some roof brown. I then reassembled the cab windows, number boards, headlight, and horn.
And here she is all finished (well, 99% finished) and re-assembled, posing for the obligatory 'shoving a boxcar' shot. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Only thing I have left to do now is shoot some exhaust soot onto the roof. Once I've done that I'll probably take some more photos in some better light.
Hope you all enjoyed and found this useful.
So I recently got hold of one of these brand new for about $40 less than they're normally worth. Figured it'd be a good candidate for some basic enhancements and weathering. The GP15-1 is one of my favourite locomotives so I really enjoyed this one. It's painted in the late Conrail scheme, so this locomotive fits a late 90's era.
Here's how she looked straight out the box:
The most obvious flaw here is the blue steps/stepwells and the lack of white stepwell handrails. Less obvious is that the front stations are supposed to be deck-mounted, rather than mounted on the edge of the pilot, but it's not a big deal. Overall atlas have scored a home run with this one - the horn (a Nathan P3) and plows are exquisite.
First order of the day is to take the shell off the chassis. This being a DCC ready locomotive, the shell literally just pulls straight up off, with a little jiggling.
Here we can see a little bit better what we are up against in the stepwell area.
And this gives a good idea of the cab wall thickness visible through the windows.
Okay so that's enough photos of the toylike super-clean out of the box appearance. Let's get down to some disassembly!
I started by removing the frame from the hood, which is held on by some lugs. Then I removed the plows, and the walkways/handrails molding which was glued down to the frame using some kind of sticky non-drying glue stuff. As is completely standard with all my builds/projects, I managed to snap a lug off the hood.
Next up I removed the cab, where I broke another lug or two because as you can tell by now I'm hamfisted.
I popped out the glazing, and pulled the horn out of it's slots.I started out with the main hood, painting all the grills black.
While the jar of black paint was open I moved on to the stepwells and walkways.
One of my favourite tricks for enhancing n scale locomotives is to paint the inside edge of the windows to disguise the wall thickness. Normally I'd also use a sharpie here to pick out the window gaskets, but Conrail actually painted the window gaskets on their GP15-1's the same blue as the rest of the carbody. This little job always makes my eyes go funny.
I also paint the cab interior black, which I find helps to assist with creating the illusion of a thinwall cab.
At this point I realised from looking at photographs of the prototype that the numberboard is surrounded by a rubber gasket. I picked this detail out using a sharpie, and then painted the hole to prevent any blue from showing up on the wrong sideo f the gasket. There's a couple little places where I accidentally got some paint on the outside walls of the cab while painting the windows - this is easily removed by gliding a sharp exacto over it creating a very crisp finish.
As I said earlier, Atlas' n scale Nathan P3 is exquisite (and tiny!) - I've seen brass aftermarket horns in HO that weren't this good. To do this detail part justice, I weathered it separately with the usual black soot that finds it's way into the bell mouths, and a liberal dusting of roof brown on the upper surfaces.
Next up I turned back to the handrails and added some white paint.
I picked out the class lights in silver. I'm not a huge fan of the molded-on grabs that Atlas is still using on their n-scale stuff, especially when they apply a transfer over it like this.
I always start the 'weathering' with the chassis, giving it a simple treatment of shades of browns and blacks.
I added some rust to the coupler, as well as the rust and dirt that tends to build up around the MU cables behind the plow.
The plows came up next, with a dose of dirt and rust.
I then weathered the walkways with some different shades of rusty and dirty browns.
Of course no weathered frame would be complete without some battery box grunge.
This stage is a little thing I like to call "crevice grime". I simply use a wash of dark brown to pick out the gaps between the hood doors, and to create streaks and splatters. It's pretty common on locomotives to see dirt that has been splashed by rain from the walkway up onto the the hood, which is what I'm referring to when I say "splatters". While I'm doing this I also start to fill up the grills with some dirt and rust.
Finally, I fired up the air compressor, masked off the roof vents, and shot some roof brown. I then reassembled the cab windows, number boards, headlight, and horn.
And here she is all finished (well, 99% finished) and re-assembled, posing for the obligatory 'shoving a boxcar' shot. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Only thing I have left to do now is shoot some exhaust soot onto the roof. Once I've done that I'll probably take some more photos in some better light.
Hope you all enjoyed and found this useful.
