Living only a half day's drive from Albuquerque, I was fortunate to see, and ride on, the RailRunner almost since its beginning. And I still think it is one of the neatest paint schemes on any train - anywhere. So, when first coming home from Albuquerque, I sent photos to Lionel suggesting they consider doing that train. They still owned K Line by Lionel at the time, so I thought they had access to the loco and bi-level cars that K Line produced. No response from Lionel.
It remained a dream until I started seeing photos of a Railrunner on Passenger Train Collector's posts. Contacting him, he replied that he had a custom paint job to create his set. Well, I am lucky that one of my train friends makes train decals as a sideline. So teaming with Stan, between our two photo collections, he created a set of decals for the loco and cars.
Last fall's Cal Stewart swap meet yielded the Bombadier carts and Ebay the K Line loco. It took a while to research the best paint stripping technique, but I settled on 90 present Isotropol alcohol, which worked fine. A local auto paint shop made the base color and with Stan's suggestions, the decals went on.
That is the short version of a nine month project, but I now have what may be only the second RailRunner running on three rails. See what you missed, Lionel?
