Musing about Gold Locos and making them yourself.

Lee,

Do you think the Ford dealership technician might know if is feasible?

I've actually seen my son run the machine - he gold plated a shift knob for a customer (pretty dumb I felt, as its bound to wear off, but anyway).  I'll ask him. 

I just did a little research on gold plating and was surprised to discover that it is so thin in most cases that almost no gold is required.  I expected the cost of the gold would be a factor, but I did a rough estimate of what would be required to plate, say, an ATSF 3759 Northern and came up with maybe a dollar's worth at most.  The machines might be expensive though.  One thing I would worry about is apparently gold plating is much thinner than paint, which, thin as it is, flows out and overs up very tinyu surface irregulatrities.  Not sure if the raw, unpolished casting would look good plated. 

You should be able to do it yourself. Caswell among others sell goldplating kits. I think you would need a heavy coat of copper plating first to smooth out the imperfections. your investment in materials and equipment would likely buy a couple of these engines though.

Pete

wonder if gold leaf is an alternative?

you wouldn't need to invest in the plating equipment.

I will let the experts do this for me. In my opinion, it is not worth the bother to do it yourself.

Lee,

Tank plating would be more practical than pen plating would be for a locomotive shell.

Speak with a jeweler that does silver & gold re-plating/repair on silver services (teapots etc.) for an estimate on cost.  

It would probably be less expensive  than purchasing outright the plating system & solutions needed, unless you plan on going into the plating business.

Dave

Professional tank gold plating solution is very expensive and also plating tank effeciency becomes another consideration. Company I work for does gold plating on components used in the medical and other industries.  A typical gold plating thickness is 50 micro-inches and typically does require a copper flash prior to gold plating.

Now here is certainly an easier way to do this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lionel-700E-Hudson-GOLD-PLATED-Test-Sample-Body-/200939524006?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item2ec8edcfa6

Your the master of "rattle can paints" Lee, why not use something like this?

Ed, The reason for copper plating is most cases is not to improve adherence of the top metal but to act the same way as sanding primer does for a paint job. If you ever stripped a diecast loco you know how rough the surface can be. Platers that do "show chrome" used triple layer plating including copper, nickle, and chrome. The copper is applied then polished smooth to rid the surface of imperfections.

Caswell brush plating kits are relatively inexpensive. The link posted above shows a gold kit for 67 bucks. Its the copper plating equipment that would be expensive as their brush plating kit would not apply a thick enough coat of copper.

Understand the OP's original post was academic.

Pete

Uh..what prototypical railroad ran gold plated locomotives....(before Conrail and

Amtrak)?

If you read the description, this shell could never be mounted as it was not really finished.

Not plated, but:

(4960 got painted gold once, also...)

Then there's this one...

Rusty

I'm going to be running one when I get this one finished.   It still needs decals, and I'm not sure what to do with the bullion car.

Wow - I have this very can upstairs.  I used it to paint the gold front of the "Turbine-Tipton Building," below, in my uptown area.  As you can see, the result is not nearly as shiny as the top of the can would indicate (but then I never really expected it would be).  This is a superior gold paint and gives  surface that is gold and looks just a tad shiny - like really good glossy paint, but I've never seen anything really "pure gold" from any paint - for a jewelry-like finish, it has to be gold plating. 

Wouldn't the underlying surface have a lot to do with how the paint appears?

hello gunrunnerjohn.........

I like that golden train you made, perhaps use simple black dry letter transfer "golden comet" on the tender and caboose ?

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,623

tiffany

I'm going to either use dry transfers or take a crack at printing my own decals as I've obtained the decal paper for my color laser printer.

It's going to be the Fort Knox Express, and the engine number will be the zip code of Fort Knox.

Yeah, I suppose the surface would have a bit to do with it, both for plating, and paint.  This building I painted was primed and sanded with #600 nicely smooth in the hopes I would get a little more sheen and gold glow than I got.  It does look really good - the photo dulls it just a bit -  but its not new-gold-coin shiny, for sure.  Dry transfer letters ought to work well, but a lesson I've learned - I've had them dissolve under some spray on clearcoat sprays I use for the final coat.  Best to test on something cheap first.  Press on vinyl lettering does look too bad if well done.

I figured I'll print a sheet of decals with lots of spares and try a couple on some old scrap cars to see how well they work.  I've never printed them before.  If they don't work, I'll look at the dry transfer letters.

Why would you want a gold locomotive?

In the olden days folks would build brass kit locomotives, then take them to the platers for a nickel flash.  Same deal; the entire locomotive was dipped, and the nickel would not adhere to insulation or inside bearings.  You can see the results on eBay, by looking at the perennial offering of that WM Challenger.

In fact, Lobaugh instructions offered that as an alternative to painting.  I have seen such models offered for sale at triple the price of a similar black- painted model.  Hope springs eternal.

I checked last year, and the minimum charge is now $100 or so, meaning I have to get a three unit set of PAs cleaned and ready, or economically it does not make sense.

What you do not want to do is let them buff it for you.  You practically have to get that in writing - the model locomotive is not a teapot.

Opinion.

Why not?

John when I saw your train the first thing that came to mind was the Goldfinger Express with the loco number 007.

Nothing after 1970 will be worth anything, so you might as well paint them.

I believe Testor has metalic paints in their 'Model Master' line that you apply a "metalizer" finish over, then buff out to get the shiny metalic look.

Lee and all,

If you want to create a finish on something that is truly gold or chrome, there is only one place to contact - www.alsacorp.com  I've been following the company for years via their web site.  It is a process you have to see to believe.

Go to this page and watch the 2 videos (one at the top of the page and one at the bottom) and you'll see small objects and a VW bug hood turn to chrome right before your eyes in seconds - http://www.alsacorp.com/products/chromefx/ 

On this page you can check out ALL of the different colors and effects they have to offer - http://www.alsacorp.com/killercans.htm  Note that this page is for 'Killer Cans', yep... chrome from a rattle can - watch the 1st video.  You'll notice they wear no protective clothing, its water based

Lee, cruise the pages and you'll see a Tiki statue done in GOLD, a soccer ball done in GOLD... and Gucci does their shoes using Alsa's products, look for the chrome shoes!

Do a base coat in gold and the ChromeFX as a top coat.  They even have this stuff in sheets - change the color of your car every year, just heat it with a hair dryer, peel it off and start again.  Amazing products from an amazing company.  Sadly, I own none of their stock

BTW, don't blame me if you get lost on this site for hours - LOTS of neat stuff to look at.

Best,

Dave

Sounds like a swell idea to me. You could do one of those Santa Fe things. Just look at the improvement to this car....

Regardless if it were painted or not, I think you'd probably want to soda blast it first.

That's another good choice for the name, decisions...decisions...decisions...

Caswell Plating has their own forum. It appears besides the cost, its difficult to get good results when trying to plate Zamac with enough issues to support its own sub forum.

Pete

Most folks would not go for the expense of this kind of operation I would imagine.  Certainly, for my novelty train, I'm not going to spend that kind of money.

I agree.  Not easy, not cheap.  I asked the question out of curiosity not any desire to go through.  For one thing, I don't want a gold loco.  But its clearly also a big undertaking that's probably going to cost a person alot more than the loco's worth.  

If I were going to try this I would try and do as much of the prep work myself. Strip the paint with soda blasting or solvent strippers. If the casting is newer with few blemishes just polish it. The plating shop will determine if its need copper. If it does I would retrieve it before gold plating and do the polishing myself to avoid the details getting rubbed off. Then get it gold plated. Many times you can have common plating like tin and copper done in a batch with other items and save a lot. Shop around to find out if that is possible and if Zamac is a problem. Once the copper is polished you could either see if the Ford dealer would plate it, buy a Caswell Kit, or see what it would cost to have commercially done. 

All that said, I would go with Dave's paint option.

Pete

Lee: I run a plating company. If I was going to gold plate one of the unpainted Lionel steam locomotive shells I would be looking at about in the $350.00 to $400.00 range. Since the shell is a casting it would have to be pre-plated with both a cyanide or pyrophosphate based copper strike and plate to about 0.0005 thick minimum.  It also may have to be buffed after copper plating as Zamack or Zinc Die Cast tends to be high in porosity. It all depends on the quality of the casting. Building the shell up with copper first fill in those pores. The copper plating is critical as the cyanide and or pyrophosphate copper baths are a mild alkaline base and will not attack the casting. The nickel bath is acidic and  will attack the casting without the copper buffer layer. The bright nickel after copper plate will give it the shine and the gold would not be very thick most likely 30- to 50 micro inches should be enough. Zamack or Zinc Die Cast also must be plated correctly the first time around. Stripping and replating the finish is next to imposable on zinc die cast and in most cases when a zinc die cast is stripped it is ruined especial dimension wise. Most people do not realize how sophisticated it is to plate something and the cost associated and the level of skill it takes to do it right. You just dip right. No very wrong. Labor would be most of the cost in plating the shell. Material cost would be very low.

I liken FMCs responce to that of getting real car bumpers replated in chrome...time consuming, tedious and expensive, but if ya gotta have it done, and if the guys do it right{not saying "you" don't FMC!}, it's worth it. Pot metal parts are probably the worst to deal with...

Lee- maybe look into ALcladII chrome with a gold tint clear and sealer?

Why not just have a mould made, and cast the body shell in solid gold? It won't cost much more than some of the more exotic suggestions above? You would also have a locomotive that will most likely increase in value over time.   

I like your thinking, a practical and elegantly simple, if initially expensive solution.  But then you could tell your friends, "This locomotive is worth its weight in gold."!!!!