When my friend Spencer brought up the topic of seeing some Baldwin RF16 "Sharknose" engines in the Great Northern Empire Builder paint scheme, my first response was to shudder! Oh, the horror! But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a fun project. What follows will be a series of short articles that describe the process of bringing this wild concept to reality.
When I attended the Great Scale Train Show in Timonium, MD two weeks ago, I decided to look for an affordable RF16 model. After a few hours of browsing and finding a few in the $30-50 range, I found one for $5! It was an old Tyco model with a 3-pole pancake motor. The body seemed to be in good shape structurally, with just one ladder missing and covered in a thick coat of gray primer.
The first thing I did was disassemble the engine, removing the side-frames, body, and headlight lens. The wheels were in horrible shape with mangled plastic flanges and missing traction tires, so both trucks were tossed in the trash. The decision was made that this would either be a dummy or be powered with an NWSL Stanton Drive unit. I then pried out the glued in clear plastic window material and scraped away all of the glue residue.
The body was now ready to have the paint stripped. I have a small, commercial ultrasonic cleaner that I bought on Amazon that I like to use to make this job easy. This model has a timer to shut off automatically and a heater that helps loosen dirt and paint. My favorite method is to almost fill the tank with water and place a tall glass jar (Mason jar or vase) that's tall enough to hold the model. For long models, I flip the model over about halfway through. I use glass to provide sufficient weight to keep it upright. This jar is filled with 99% pure Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA). I set the temperature to 30C and once it has achieved that temp, I insert the model into the jar of IPA and set the cleaning timer to 30 minutes. After the agitation, I allow it to soak another 30 minutes and scrub it with an old toothbrush. If the model is too tall for the jar, I flip it over and repeat the process. If the paint is particularly stubborn, I might repeat the cleaning process for 60-minutes and then let it soak overnight.
Most of the paint is either removed or easily sloughed off at this point. I use a toothpick to clean any of the crevices and then wash the body in soapy water. The toothpick is nice because it will deform into the crevices and isn't strong enough to damage any of the details. I do sometimes use a straight pin in a pin vise to carefully dislodge particularly stubborn bits, but that's not common and definitely needs a light tough!
After assessing the quality of the body and deciding to proceed, I contacted Spencer and asked if he wanted to make the GN Shark a reality. Considering the enthusiasm of his response, I probably should have just moved ahead and called him when it was ready!
Pseudo-Prototype Numbering
Once we decided to move forward with a GN paint scheme, we wanted to use a prototypical number. After reviewing the numbering of EMD and Alco cowl units, we found that they ranged from 200 through 468. No engines were numbered between 470 and 499, so we decided to use 480 for this series. This unit would receive the full EB paint before entering service and would be 480-A. A second unit (as the story goes) was obtained from New York Central, which was simply "patched out" with GN herald, lettering, and a number applied.
Paint Scheme
Given the age of the RF16, we thought that the classic Empire Builder scheme would be appropriate. When trying to map the Alco FA or EMD F series stripes, the position of the front number plate, double doors, and extended pilot just didn't "feel" right. Looking at the decal sheet from Microscale, the E7 design with the full face orange cab seemed to be the ideal choice. To get a better idea of what it would look like, I took some images from the Internet that had a full face and side view and pasted them into a vector drawing program. I did a rough tracing over the image and filled the objects with a 60% tint. This allowed the details to show through and gave the appearance of the finished design.
The nose design was done first, using the freeware program Inkscape to create the overlay. This is shown on the right side. The base image had angled number boards, while the actual model has a single number board below the headlight. This follows the E-series engines 500-504. The next mockup was the body side, which is shown below.
Another consideration was the angle of the stripe for orange over the cab. On the E7, this was about 27 degrees. I scanned the decal sheet and superimposed various angles that started at the transition point. It was decided that 35-degrees rose nicely through the space between the side grills and the cab windows, and complemented the approximately 79-degree forward angle of the RF16's nose. The image with this set of reference angles is shown below.
Summary
That's it for now. In the next installment, we'll review some prototype photos to help plan details and figure out how to light and power the engine.