A few years ago, I acquired an unpainted Lionel Legacy Southern Railway PS4. It was missing a few appliances; reverse lever, sand domes, water pumps, air tank, and some piping.
I had thoughts of modifying it the engine to represent a CB&Q (Burlington) class S4 4-6-4. I've be a Q modeler for over 60 years. The overall design of the Southern PS4 was so close in appearance to the Q's Hudson, that only a new trailing truck and a few modifications to the boiler and tender would turn this gem into a very close model of the prototype engine. Back in the late '60, someone took an HO brass PS4 by United Models and modified it to the Q's S4.
After toying with the idea for the last 2 years, the one area that I would have to make a major modification to would be the cab. The Q's Hudson had a slanted cab whereas the PS4 was straight. In order to make this change would require a lot of work, and at this stage it was more than I wanted to tackle.
Although I am not a Southern Railway fan, I always thought the PS4 was a beautiful engine. So rather than modify it, I decided to bring it back to life in the original paint scheme that this engine deserves.
I was lucky to find that Lionel had most all the missing parts I needed. The missing air tank was available from Precision Scale and the additional piping was added using brass rods.
Once I attached the various parts, I started the process of painting the engine. Disassembled the entire engine and removed all the major appliances and electronics. After a thorough cleaning, I primed everything. The inside of the cab is painted a light green. Then I painted the smoke box and fire box with a mix of Floquil silver and graffiti. This was followed with Scale Coat II black for the frame and boiler below the running boards.
I used Scale Coat II Southern Railway green for the boiler and tender, which is where I am now.
I still have a lot to do, hand paint all the piping green and touch up some black and silver. The cab roof and the top of the tender need to be painted an oxide red.
Decals need to be added and then final assemble. I figure I'm still about 2 weeks away from completion. When I paint my models, I like to let the paint set for 2 to 3 days before I handle the model again.
I'll post more photos as I go along.
RAY
satin clear top coat, Looks good, bought the number from radtrains (ebay) and did look at k4decals, Have a GG-1 pw would like to strip and do burnswick greeen, HAGD again very nice. Mark 
