Painting and Weathering of JSSX 5068

This first photo has nothing to do with JSSX 5068, but here's a quick look at CN's GP38 4730 from this past Wednesday.  Not that I have a spare GP38 around, but I'm trying to figure out how in the world I would go about emulating weathering such as this...

According to the rrpicturearchives website, EMD built this locomotive in January of 1973.  Note the odd looking (replacement?) number boards it has, and also that the green light above the number boards is lit.

And now, on to the main subject for the week.  Here's a rundown of what my Dash 8 40-B 5068 went through.

The engine started out in Conrail blue, and I'd sort of weathered it and patched it for my JSSX quite a long while ago. At one time I tried to get ditch lights installed on it, but my installer couldn't get it apart to put them in, so that didn't work out. Too bad, because I really would have liked that.

Then I got the idea for re-painting and weathering it from a YouTube video that Brian Smith sent me, featuring  CCET's (Cincinnati Eastern Terminal) 5895. The CCET locomotive is actually a B36-7, and a former TTI and Conrail engine. Not quite the same type as my Dash 8 40B, but somewhat similar, and certainly close enough for me.

I chose to keep my model's number as 5068, as it made things easier in that I could just leave the number boards as they were.

5068 in it's Conrail blue

Workbench looked a bit occupied that day.

Taken apart on the workbench, and the Conrail logo is removed.  I took a shortcut though and didn't strip away the blue paint.

The basic re-paint is done,  2 colours of grey and the light yellow stripe on the sills.

Unfortunate that a bit of paint pulled away with the masking tape when I sprayed the dark grey patches.  I fixed that later.

Engineer's side with the weathering well underway.

5068 in the doorway of the maintenance building.  Notice the novel location of the JSSX reporting marks.  I got that idea from the YouTube video I mentioned above.

Weathering's done, handrails are back on, this thing's looking like a winner. Something a little different are the yellow numbers on the cab.

5068 across the road from the scrap metal yard.  Some may think the location seems a bit appropriate.  See what I did with that spot on the side of the short hood where the tape had pulled the paint away?

And a look at 5068 from up above.