Down at the club

SVL 8475 on the main line just south of Nowheres

SVL 8392 picking up a baggage car at the Nowheres REA facility 

SVL 8392 passing through the Nowheres passenger station

The two S4 switchers went back to SVL today, and after getting them programmed I took them around Nowheres for a photo tour.

SVL S4 ready for operations

For now I'm done with the S4 switchers for Silicon Valley Lines and will take them down to the club for inspection and approval to run on the club layout.
I used Pan Pastels to give the units a tad of weathering, but found that Testor's Dullcote reacts with the pastels and tones them down dramatically when applied at full strength. Light overspray results in visible blobs when looking closely. The rattle can also has a tendency to "spit", and I now have a fat blob of Dullcote on one of the engine hoods with does not make me happy at all. I had good results with Dullcote so far, but in the future I will use an airbrush to get a finer, more consistent spray.

The weathering on the greens and the trucks is much less visible than on the yellows. After re-reviewing prototype photos on rrpicturearchives.net, I noticed that the sides of these units tend to be cleaner than I had them, so I ended up toning everything down a bit.

Below are some more in-progress shots.

The front unit has its first round of weathering applied, the rear unit is still untouched.

Both units weathered. Time for Dullcote to mess it all up.

Sealed

The new decals on the Silicon Valley Lines switchers are sealed with Dullcote. Now getting ready for weathering.

Nuts!

Where did I get this utterly insane idea from to populate the number boards on the two SVL switchers?

The numbers are only slightly wider than the blade of the utility knife, and I ended up cutting them out with the fine blade in an Exacto knife. This doesn't bode well for my ideas to renumber some of my German freight cars. Since European car identification numbers are substantially smaller than what's common in the U.S., most of the numbers I will need to piece together have the same size that drove me almost insane here. It did get a little bit better with practice, but I also grew more impatient.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for working with really small decals such as individual numbers in tiny fonts?

Update June 13, 2016:
... and looking at prototype photos of CNW 1078, the number boards are actually not populated either! Sigh. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble here...

Still Decaling ...

I'm taking it slow with the decals for the SVL switchers. Logos are done and the first round of number decals is now drying.
I changed my mind on which numbers I wanted after I realized what a giant pain puzzling together individual numbers is. Especially for the tiny numbers at the hood and the cab of the engine. Instead I chose numbers that can be cut as one piece from the decal sheet.
I'm using the MicroScale system for this: MicroGloss on the model, MicroSet to glue the decal, MicroSol to soften the decal as needed. Works like a charm. You just need to take your time.

Decaling CNW S4 for Silicon Valley Lines

A little while ago I purchased two Bachmann CNW S4 switcher engines for use at Silicon Valley Lines. At the last Ops session, I used them in Nowheres Yard straight out of the box with some minor adjustments. They ran reasonably well, so now it is time to turn them into SVL locomotives.

CNW engines already have the proper green-yellow paint scheme, so I just need to remove the markings and apply the SVL decals. How hard could that possibly be?

I have to admit, I've never done that before. The markings on the cab sides on these Bachmann units came off quite easily with a rubber and some gentle pressure. For some stubborn bits I used a pencil eraser.

The engine numbers on the front and rear were simply painted over with a color I mixed from green, blue, and black. I just spitballed the color to be reasonably close to the green on the model. Once the engines get a weathering treatment, the slight differences in color won't be noticable anymore.

Finally, I applied the first round of decals. This process is taking longer than I expected. So even though I'm working on both engines in parallel, I won't get done tonight, which means they won't operate at the ops session tomorrow. Bummer.