SP AC-4:
This engine was also factory painted with the boiler removed so it could, also, be painted in Sacramento grey.
Initially, I was not going to try to put lights in the marker lights since it was factory painted, fearing I would 'booger' (as the Brits say) the paint but I thought I'd give it 'a go'.
Surprisingly, the drilling of the marker lights went very well.
I used the usual #55 to drill out the sides of the marker lights using the mini drill press and supporting the marker light on some thin wood. I put some oil on the drill bit and drilled about half way and then, cleaned off the bit, re-oiled and finished up through the marker light, giving very little pressure on the bit so as to not grab the marker light when the bit' broke through' the opposite side.
I then used a hand drill to do the front of the marker light holding the marker light with some jeweler's nose pliers. After drilling the sides, there's very little brass remaining on the front so the manual drilling went quickly.
I needed some 'routing' holes in the face of the cab plus in the floor of the cab so I used a #62 drill bit and manually drilled those holes. I was surprised at how easy it was to drill out the holes in the brass sheeting. With #30 size wires on the LED's, these holes did not need to be very large. I had to drill the hole above the marker light as there wasn't much room below it, not scale but it shouldn't be noticeable.
One poppet valve was missing so I used the same #62 drill bit to manually drill the hole for the new valve that I happen to have a few spares of them.
The engine was then masked off and painted.
