CNW GP 7's part 5

CNW GP 7's 4142 and 4201 under construction

wheelsets painted, fan blades prepped for painting

Freshly glosscoated and test assembled units

CNW 4201 required modifications to light bar due to a sound system

numberboards painted, decaled and masked for clearcoating/weathering

4142 decaled, detail painted

Next, I brush painted the wheelsets and airbrushed the fan blades silver. At this point, I reassembled the mechanisms and assembled the fan blades in their respective housings on the main body shells plates.
I then took the shell assemblies and gave them a coat of Testor's Glosscoat at this point to aid in the decal process.

One of the units had to have one of it's front light bars modified due to the speaker installation for the sound system. After pondering this for a few minutes, I chopped down the bar, and polished down the end so light could go through it. I then took and fabricated a bracket to hold the replacement bulb in the correct location. At this point, I took the numberboards and masked off the back and the headlight bar part and sprayed them with Testor's Acryl gloss white.

At this point, I proceeded to decal the units. I used a combination of Microscale decals to get the correct lettering. For the step wells, I chose to decal the white safety striping in place. Some people tend to paint this, but personally I don't like the way it looks. Everyone tends to have their own techniques for decaling, so I guess I'll share what works for me. After slicing and chopping out the appropriate decals with a razor blade, I toss them in a little container of warm water. Once the backing falls off, I use a fine paint brush to lift them out and apply them directly to the model that has been prepped with a solution of half solvaset and half water. Once everything is aligned and and dry, I go over the decal a couple of times with full strength Champ decal setting solution. If the decal won't set right, I'll poke it a few times and drench it several times with more Champ decal setting solution at full stregnth.

After the decaling was complete, I painted the MU hoses black, headlight castings silver, and touched up the MU recepticles and fuel tank fittings with red. Also, I installed all of the grab irons and handrails, and those that needed touch up got it at this point. Also, after the handrails were installed, I painted the portions close to the stepwells white.

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