What do you use to remove the paint.

99% isopropal alcohol and a stiff brush for scrubbing.

Depends what it's stuck to.....

Gus.

The paint would not budge on this one.This was origonally a U33-C that I shortened to get a U 33-B .It was a SP unit and the paint would not come off.Lke all of my locos this is a ongoing project which right at the moment is waiting for Athearn to get some RTR nickel silver wheelsets in stock.



People keep asking me why I bother with these old blue box Athearns when the ATLAS units are soooo much nicer .The point is I have less invested in the 6 units I have (4 B's + 2 C 's) than what one ATLAS unit would cost.

I'm getting closer,colour is Krylon Fusion burgundy.I need to decal RR logo,road # and safety stripes paint the ends of the railings,edge of bottom step and roof white.I'm thinking that painting the straight part of the grabs white might be a good idea too.



Oh,and I need to do something about front and rear number boards or at least the numbers.

Then there is the horn,bell,wipers,and window glass

I'm almost there.I have a few more details I want to add as I find them ,but for now this is good enough.

Color choice looks great to me Catt! Nice looking loco!

Thanks Ralph,now if I could just get it to run.I'mm thinking I have a connection problem somewhere because we could not read the decoder.I will wait till next week when there's someone at club that knows a lot more about DCC than I do.

Update pic for the U28-B.She is painted and decaled ,had windows installed .Needs more detail parts but no one has any #80 drill bits in West Michigan. Loco is currently in the shop because of a faulty decoder .Any way here is the loco's current status.

Here's a pic for the second GP38-3 project I am working on.Like the U28-B this one is lacking certain detail parts due to no #80 drill bits in the area.

That GVR loco is really sharp looking Catt, the other loco is nice but for my money I prefer 5430.

Mke, 2370 is a ex Conrail GP35 rebuilt to GP38-3 specs and belongs to the leasing arm of the Grande Valley Railway MTS (Midwest Transportation Services) the L signifies leasing.

5430 is a regular GVR locomotive so it is in GVR colours.MTS is actually the parent company of the GVR and 3 shortline railroads.

My current big power is a GE Dash 9-40 CW (ex CN) that is being rebuilt for sister road Grand Rapids & Indiana.

that's what I call plenty of fun!

This is Grand Rapids & Indiana Dash9-44 CW 2012.



She's not quite finished yet but I thought a progress pic was in order.The GR & I was a real railroad that at one time ran from South Bend Ind. to the northern tip of Michigan's mitten.The rr has been a fallen flag since (according to my source) 1910 when the NYC bought it.There is a fellow in Indiana that is resurecting the GR & I in Indiana in HO and since my Grande Valley uses the origonal GR & I yard in GR for it's headquarters I could not resist a few GR & I locos. :mrgreen:

[Edit] according to what I was just reading it was the Pennsylvania that bought the GR & I .To show you how far out of wack Wickpedia is it says in there that the railroad ran on the eastern side of the state.

Here is a sneek peak at another HO project I am playing with.This was the very first Athearn loco (bluebox SD-9)I bought in 1979 shortly after we bought our house.This loco actually spent most of its early life running on a LHS layout.During that time it wore out 3 motors ,and 5 trucks.The loco averaged 70 hours a week of constant running and sold more than a few model railroaders on Athearn products. :mrgreen:

I have decided it was time to upgrade the old girl so along with DCC and nickel silver wheel sets she's getting some cosmetic surgery. After stripping the paint the first thing I did was to carve out the radiator grilles and install a set of Plano grilles made for the Proto 2000 SD-9. Irv Athearn must have really had his act together on the SD-9 because the grilles are a purrfect fit.Anyway here is the first pic of this project.



I have two 6 packs of Athearn RTR nickel silver wheel sets coming.I am going to replace the outer wheel sets on this unit and two SD40-2s leaving the sintered wheels in the center position to help with the tracktive effort.