@J Cummings posted:Restoring and painting old trains is addictive. I got addicted many years ago and always look to improve on what I do. I think all who are contributing to this discussion and others who are following would agree. I will responded to Malcom's post as best I can.
Although you want to have the Red Comet ready for a meet on 9/27 you may be overly optimistic, but go for it!
Baking is in the eye of the beholder. I have many very nice looking restorations that were not baked. But, I felt limited to when I was able to paint. Heat and humidity major concerns here in the South. I personally
In regard to my being optimistic about the time to restore my Red Comet. Actually a lot of the work is already done. I've reduced the whole train to kit form and am done with shining up most of the detail pieces and repainted the trucks. The most time consuming part of the task was wire brushing the wheels and axles which were in pretty bad shape with lots of rust.
To show you what I mean by "kit", here are two photos. The first shows the bodies ready for sand blasting. I've got a friend with a blaster who even has grit fine enough to use on plastic. Then it's painting, baking and assembly.
This takes me back to the time 70 years ago when I began building HO from kits. Those early kits had about the same number of parts.
I've been able to do this project with only original parts with one exception. The bracket for the tender coupling under the locomotive cab was missing so I had to make it. Fortunately there are enough photos around that I could get very close on the dimensions. I was able to preserve all of the clips for truck mounting. Of course the lettering is repro - dry transfers from Art Warnick.
And now back to painting questions
