Hey all. Just putting the finishing touches on a recent build and thought I’d share.
A while back I met @Emerson Case at a train show. We were discussing Ontario Northland passenger trains and I had just completed my Polar Bear Express. Emerson was looking for a different version of the loco for a train he was modelling and it sounded like a fun project so I agreed to take that on for him.
He’s modelling the Northlander Tee train sets that ONR purchased in the 70’s (?). He purchased a beautiful factory painted Tee train made by Minitrix. ONR swapped out the locomotive with an FP7 and that’s what we’re modelling here.
Emerson provided me with a Kato FP7, and an Intermountain F7 shell, the idea being that we could swap the pilots to achieve a more accurate model.
We settled on unit number 1984 as I learned that ONR had a variety of FP7s with and without portholes and ditch lights. 1984 had portholes, but no ditch lights while in Tee service, which made it a good match for the Kato shell.
I cut away the pilot from the IM F7 and then carefully removed the same amount of material from the Kato FP7.
Test fitting was a perfect fit except the IM shell was made of a much thicker material.
I used a grinder chucked in a vice (all I had in hand at the time) to carefully thin the pilot, resulting in a clean swap that fit the Kato chassis nicely.
Other changes included removing the lower front headlight and filling in the horns….
Removing the steam generator details on the rear roof panel, a fan, and adding a bell, winter hatch and exhaust stack…
And adding some louvered vents on the side.
With alterations to the shell complete I installed a Digitrax DCC decoder. The decoder for this loco was out of stock at all of my usual haunts, but an LHS had one in stock for a different loco (Kato uses the same form factor for several locos, just with different LED options). I used a DN167K0D which had two SMD LEDs. I removed the rear SMD LED and replaced the front with a 3mm LED with one of the appropriate length and a more realistic colour. I used the factory Kato board to compare and get the LED length correct.
Finally it was time to move onto paint.
The loco got a primer coat of Rustoleum grey primer.
A
Paint was a little bit of an head scratcher. The goal was to match the factory paint on the Tee trainset which wasn’t “proper” ONR colours. I quote proper as there are several brands that make ONR colours and they are all different …. And the prototype widely varied depending on the age, so there really isn’t a proper colour. Add to this that the Highball Graphics decal at was another colour of dark blue which was also not “proper”, and also did not match the Minitrix Tee set. So the goal was to match the Tee set and hope that the decals would still look ok even though they didn’t match.
This is the part of the project I was really looking forward to as I have not attempted to match factory colours on a project yet.
I chose to use Tru-Color paints as I found another modeller on line who had used them to match an HO scale ONR Tee model. Also, I’ve used them on a few projects and really like the way they shoot, and the quality of the finish. I had a bunch of colours on hand already so it seemed an easy choice.
Well, I mixed up a batch per the reference and I found and it was not a good match for this N scale model. So I went on an adventure experimenting on my own.
I started with pure reefer yellow. It was too yellow and ultimately I achieved a close match by using roughly a 60/40 mix of reefer yellow and reefer orange.
Next was the dark blue. It was too blue and needed to lighter and greyer. I have no idea how the colour wheel works and was just trying random things. The the closest I had was B&O blue, and a random bottle of Brooklyn and Queens Transit cream. I have no idea where that came from. A 70/30 mixture of that looked really close to me.
On the model it was a little lighter, but close enough that Emerson was pleased enough to move on. The pics actually look more off than in real life. This made me happy as the masking was ridiculously hard with all the curves on the nose.
For the light blue I landed on a 50/50 mix of B&O dark blue and ONR light blue with a few drops of the Transit cream. That one was a near perfect match.
Finally, I painted the back wall black and the vents silver. I also applied a few washes of Tamiya black panel liner wash to the grills to try to accent them. It improved the look but didn’t make the insides of the grill as black as I’d like. Still pondering that one.
With painting and touch ups complete, it was time to move onto decals. This was probably the easiest loco I’ve ever had to do as it required a total of two decals per side, not including number boards. I was having decals custom made for another project and decided to have the number boards added to that so I wouldn’t have to assemble them on the model. Those will be added later.
The hardest part was getting them to lay down over the steps and handrails. Solvaset came to the rescue here. It ultimately needed four applications.
Here’s the final result prior to dull coat. Up to now both Emerson and I are pleased. It’s almost time to move onto assembly!!
Thanks for following along. I’ll post more when it’s complete.
Craig
