New SD40 for the Layout

 I picked up this Kato model SD40-2 through a facebook group 3 or 4 months ago, and it's been sitting out on the workbench pretty much ever since. I liked this one because it's sub-lettered GTW which interchanges with my JSSX, and it's got the CN North America map logo which is my favourite of the CN orange and black schemes.

The engine runs fine, and really has just been waiting final assembly of the basic details included in the box.  And weathering.

After first masking the cab windows, I sprayed 3 coats of ProtoPaint Flat Haze over the whole engine, and added a light touch of streaking grime to the sides of the cab.

The Flat Haze turned out alright on the cab, and turned the black long hood more toward grey, which was more or less what I thought it would do.  I wasn't overly pleased with that, but it wouldn't really matter much as I was intending to get the engine looking more like it had been accumulating road grime over the years.

The road grime look was accomplished by building up light layers of thinned Roof Brown.  The detail parts sprues in the above photo are that black delrin plastic, which doesn't really hold paint all that well.  I sprayed the parts with Stynylrez surface prep - first time I've used it - in the hope for better adhesion of paint.  Time will tell.  I painted the step rails with a light grey, as I felt that white would be too clean looking.  Stanchions at the front and rear of the locomotive are painted in CN Orange.

Online photos of the real 5931 showed an all weather window on the engineer's side, so I wanted to add that feature. That led to a small problem though, as the model has locating holes for a sunshade that would be exposed above the window. I cut the end off of a micro-brush and used that to fill the holes.

Now you see 'em...the locating holes plugged with white plastic above the all weather window

Now you don't...just a tiny dab of Floquil CN Orange hides the 2 plugs. At the bottom of the photo, that white thing pointing toward the cab is/was the micro brush I used to plug the holes. You can also see here a bit of fuel spill streaking on the fuel tank. A couple of Vallejo products were brushed on for that effect.

In no particular order, here are the various paints, etc. that were used in this weathering project.

That's about all I can do on this one for now.  I'll still want to get mu hose sets at least for the front.

Anyway, if you've followed along this far today, I think you deserve to see the SD40 out on the rails, so here are a few shots of 5931 in service...

I'm really pleased to have this addition to the layout.  Thanks for looking in.