Straightening Bent Die-Cast Cab Roof August 1, 2021 Update

Mel, here are some more pictures.I tried to add some aquarium charcoal to the tender load.  Painted the whole load with white glue then rolled it in the charcoal.  I wasn't thrilled by the result so I cleaned off what had stuck and washed the glue off before it could set so I wouldn't have that Elmer's shine on the tender load.  I may experiment with an old tender I have, may be the bed of charcoal I was rolling it in wasn't deep enough or there wasn't enough room to displace the charcoal so that there was enough contact with the existing tender load.

I also contemplated add smoke lifters since many of the Mohawks sported them at different times throughout their time on the line.  Couldn't find any available, was thinking about fabricating some but the author of the article I used thought the lifters didn't do anything for the looks and lines of the engine.  After studying pictures I agreed with that assessment. 

@coach joe posted:

John, I like the way the firebox turned out also.  Found a picture on the interweb, some resizing and a two test prints and voila, almost as good as firebox glow.

Ha! I was amazed when I saw the firebox - I kind of assumed it was some sort of LED trickery and thought, "Ain't it amazin' what they can do with electronics nowadays!"

George

Coach, I did a how to on doing improved coal loads ….

https://ogrforum.com/...s-cast-in-coal-loads

on the scale steam I use Brennan’s no’s 4 &5 for the semi scale stuff, I’d recommend Brennan’s no 1 or 2,…stuff looks amazing when finished!…

your Mohawk looks amazing!…you did a great job!!..

Pat

George, sometimes simple works too, especially for me.

Pat thanks for the link to your coal load how to.  I scanned it real quick and see that I had liked it when you posted it.  That's kinda what I tried to do.  Definitely need something better than Elmers, but glad I didn't try epoxy for the first attempt.  Could you imagine trying to clean that off?  I think my main problem was the container I put the charcoal in.  It was a small wooden box, not much wider than the tender and not very deep.  I figured it would be better to contain the charcoal so it would make better contact.  Next time I try I'll use a deeper tray so I can really push the tender down into the charcoal.

@coach joe posted:

So it has been six months since I finished straightening out the bent cab roof and stripping the Santa Fe markings from this MTH RailKing Mohawk.  The plan always was to dress this engine in proper New York Central livery.  I found a wonderful article on the Late Mohawks on the NYCHS web site.  This RailKing engine is creditable representation of an L3A Mohawk, however the size of the tender is closer to those pulled by the L2Ds.  I got some NYC steam decals and began planning the transformation.  The set of decals had a 3056 number in series.  This was an actual Mohawk road number, however it was an L3C, but I wasn't about to start piecing together a number for an L3A.  As I started looking through photos for proper placement and size of lettering it became apparent the decal set was for O scale engines and the selective compression employed by MTH to make a good looking engine in less than scale dimensions started giving me problems.  The engine numbers appear larger than those on actual Mohawks.  The tender lettering came in two sizes, I guess one for road engines with longer tenders and one for short tenders or switch engines.  The available number for the back of the tender appears small than actual.  Pictures I've sen have that number the same size as the numbers on the cab.  Actual L2D tenders had a 28 ton coal capacity, the closest I could come is 21 tons.  But she's finally in the right livery and can finally be put into revenue service.  Further details added are a water scoop, an engineer and fireman on some homemade seats, painted the valve handles red, should have used a brighter shade, paint the gauge faces and built a fire in the fire box to get it under steam.

What decal sysrem did you use Coach ?

And yes that fire in the firebox looks great.......when I saw this I was under the impression that it was lit from behind . Nicework. 👍

Joe,

I haven't tried it, but I've wondered whether just painting a cast-in coal load with acrylic tarnished (dull) black might make it look more realistic.

MELGAR

Great job, Coach - I noticed on the extreme close-up of the tender that the decal had some silvering. Not sure if it's visible to the naked eye from a distance, but if you want to get rid of it, there are decal topcoat products available from Microscale (not Micro Set or Micro Sol) that will help or you could try spraying the tender with a clear finish (gloss, satin or flat) that is compatible with the sheen of the rest of the tender/engine.

You can also try cutting out the gaps between words with an X-acto knife and/or using a fine-tip black sharpie to color in the spaces. 

Dallas the decals were from K4 Decals, k4decales.com.  I don't know if the decal film was softer than others but I couldn't move them as much with the tip of a fine paint brush as I had other decals in the past and under magnification I feel color saturation could have been a little better but the fit the bill for what I wanted to do with this engine.

Mel I was thinking more for texture than finish so I've never given thought too a dirty black or grimy black paint that may enhance the "voids" in the cast load.

Richie I did topcoat with Testor's Dullcoat.  I guess my decal skills are limited.  I know I've read gloss coating before decaling then dull coating but I never could make decal film "disappear".