GEC's EOY 2010 Challenge

[Green_Elite_Cab]

The GP40FH-2 story-

When i was young, about 15 or 16, i got my first resin locomotive shell. It required some work on my part, such as cutting an athearn frame to match (not to hard), and i was doing well until i painted the shell. Historically, i'm BAD at painting. until lately, i hated to paint, because the finish was never quite smooth enough to look attractive, even with an airbrush.

Because of the crappy paint, i tried to strip my model. When that didn't work out entirely, i made the mistake of trying to scrape the paint with a screw driver. this gouged my model. I went ahead and painted it anyway, but my paint job still sucked, and it looked even worse with scrapes in it now. I finally gave up and let it sit on the shelf for years. This entire time, the resin was warping. eventually i successfully filled most of the gouges, and stripped the paint with acetone two years ago, only to exacerbate the warping problem.

to fix this i cut off the sides, hoping to rebuild them, and started drilling holes in the roof to replace worn and scraped details with cannon parts and Photo etched grills. Unfortuneately, rebuilding the sides right is currently beyond my capability and patience to learn, so i made a mold of a friend's model (trust me, its a crappy mold, its already coming apart), hoping to use the sides.

The new shell i made, despite it's flaws, is actually in better shape than the old one, and so now i plan to just recondition the "counterfeit" shell, as cutting the sides to try and fit them back into the roof and rear section would be to much of a pain in the ass (though i may install the rear of my old one onto the new one, as the new one is bent funny in the rear).


GP40FH-2 Photo Time-line

This is the shell new in 2006



Repaint after having gouged the shell



fully decaled. it sat like this for the better part of three years.









This is the frame. I modified the fuel tank to be prototypical in length. You pretty much HAVE to make this modification, as certain steps need to hang where a full fuel tank would be. A GP38 frame won't work right either (it pushes back from the front, while still being in the way).



i found a bubble!



After stripping and some filling-



third repaint



warping and crack



Cut out sides




I don't have any photos of the new body shell, but i'll post them when i can.