Ken Brunt said:Me too !
You lost me in the first paragraph.............;)
Thanks Jon…that’s freaking great !! Electronics will be one of the next tings I want to tackle and experiment with in this hobby. Personally I think your find is pioneering
Eleven years ago, the “Shorty” trail car went into service and it has seen a lot of use including 5 or 6 hours being piloted by my then 5 year old grand son. Over the years several details have been broken off and the paint masking mistake was amplified when the roof warped a bit showing a white line in several spots just below the roof trim.
Yesterday I began repairing the car. I can’t paint replacement parts to match the body color to as it is no longer available, so I began the long process of painting the hardware black like the tourist era prototype.
I went back and fixed all the broken photo links in my build post. I’ll take some pictures tonight and post an update of the current status.
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Thanks for reposting on this Jon.
I hadn’t been through this thread before, and am again truly amazed with your work.
Got the first pass on painting the hardware done, I needed to replace a missing grab and an NBW casting and without a way to match the car color, I decied to paint it black per the prototype in the tourist era.
First, an as-built “before” shot from when it was fresh out of paint…
And what it looks like tonight…
I kinda like how the black brings out the details. I want to change out the undersized brake line angle cock. I have some Fn3 castings from Geoff Ringle when he was selling ProtoHands that will look good. I’ll paint that black and maybe the truss rod bolts as well.
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Well done Jon, the black paint really makes the hardware pop.
I agree with you, me being a modeler first and a train runner second I would have started out with a larger car (scale) would be much easier to work with. 1;20.3 is a modelers scale for sure, I guess for me it would depend on how close to scale you want to be and how nice you want it to look.
Thanks Rick.
Looking back through the thread, painting the hardware was discussed, but I decided to be lazy and just leave everything the same color on the original build. Needing to replace a few missing detail parts and not being able to match the body color made painting black pretty much my only option.
Now that I’ve seen it, I should have done it years ago. Better late than never!
Today while waiting for the bird to cook, I’ll change out the angle cocks and paint the truss rod ends.
Today was touch-up and finish the ends day. I started out by setting up some properly scaled angle cocks. I really like the ones Geoff Ringle was selling under his ProtoHands line. Unfortunately, it didn’t catch on and he shut down production. I wish I had more. They are really well made and have a positionable valve handle…
The castings are pre-drilled for the valve stem, but need to be drilled for your air line. I used a stub of 1/16 aluminum welding rod that came from scrap ends Ric brought to ECLSTS years ago. Here they have been cleaned up, drilled, assembled and the stub glued in. Look at that detail!
The rest of the end hardware was painted and the angle cock installed with a hose and one of Geoff’s ProtoHands glad hands with chemical blackner…
The unprototypical “hoses” with connectors are the electrical connections for loco power and sound for an in-loco speaker. The other end with the glad hand painted with “Rust”…
And finally, a close up of the ProtoHands brake hose system. Geoff would take this one step further and fabricate a retaining clamp at each hose end. I’m not that fussy! I don’t use the magnetic function of the glad hands. I found that in order for them to stay connected through my turns, the hose needed to be so long that an unconnected car’s hose would get caught in switches. That and bending down to connect them outdoors was more work than fun…
I think Shorty is about ready to go back in service.
This post has been reported to the moderator for saying “properly scaled”
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Was the Rustoleum paint you used to originally to paint the car body in a spray can? I have used spray can paint for touch ups with a brush. The paint can lid works well to spray the paint into getting a small puddle of paint you can brush on.
Very nice custom made sound car!
Thanks Wayne.
I believe it was Valspar Rusty Metal Primer in a spray can. No longer carried around here. Not sure if it’s still made, or if I found it, would it be the same as 12 years ago? I have several shades of red oxide from Krylon and Rustoleum, none are a match 
