The brush power pickups in the tender of my LGB 21181 Mogul are worn. I want to put ball bearing wheels in it but it has red wheels instead of black. Long shot but has anyone ever found a good matching color for these? I really don’t want to have to repaint all the wheels.
I paint models all the time, both with the airbrush and brush. All my wheels are painted with a rust color as all railroad wheels are pretty much rusted, I guess the exception would be the engines, as many are kept clean and painted. I paint my wheels this way, I roll the wheel with my fingers and lay the brush on the wheel and roll the wheel, holding the brush in one place and the rolling of the wheel paints the wheel. You do have to move the brush up and down on the wheel as it is rolling around with your fingers and try to get an even coat on the wheel inside part. I would go to a hobby shop, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and look at there Testor’s enamel paints, those in the small bottles, the enamel paints work better then acrylics do. Take a wheel with you to match the color red you need, reds will either be dark red, or a red with more yellow in it and makes and orange red, I would say, LGB red is pretty much a true red, Testor’s will have a color that should match. Don’t worry if you you get some paint on the wheel rim, just get a Q-Tip with thinner and as you roll the wheel you wipe off the excess paint, it will turn out perfect after a little practice. I’ve probably painted 200 wheel sets that way, they come out perfect. If you ever thought about taping them off and painting them, your in for a big mess.
trainman
I have some Testors Red and it didn’t match. These wheels are a little bit lighter red. Might be from fade. This is my oldest outside loco and my favorite due to the bright colors. So it almost always is in the lineup.
As per a recommendation, I bought some Humbrol Signal Red. Hopefully that matches well enough.
I bought some auto pinstriping tape to use on the rims. But that was also when I was hoping to spray them. Maybe I will just skip that step now.
Thank you.
Dan