Reply to "What did you do on your layout today?"

Last night, I took some dry-transfer decal sheet of gold RR roman numbers (Woodland Scenics, they’re a pretty darned good match for the numbers that’d been there) to the third ET&WNC ten-wheeler, to change it from # 12 to # 9, one of three engines to carry wartime black and gold. The number plate for 9 in that timeframe had a silver painted center unlike the other two engine’s red centers for their number plates. I have no idea why that was. I had to hand-paint the thing using one of those magnifying visors and a very thin tipped brush with some Testor’s silver paint. Then, I hit it with a number transfer, but that didn’t come out very easy to see between the two colors. So I broke out a very small tipped pen and put in fake shadow lines to make the number ‘pop out’ as I couldn’t think of anything else to do there. It’s not perfect, but it looks okay for what it should be. It’s not something that’s going to be noticed that much anyway. I normally don’t like dry transfers much because they rub off so easily, but the cab sides and sand domes aren’t placed that would be handled much, I’d think. I’d sanded off the original numbers with the finest grit wet-dry sandpaper I could find. I still need to weather all three of them. I also have # 14 in green and gold prewar paint, and I'm not 100% sure what I'll be doing with that one, as 14 was already working Alaksa on the White Pass by then (in fact, was probably at the Northern Pacific shops at South Tacoma for a complete rebuild after it's first year in Alaska, along with ET&WNC # 10)...

Each locomotive by then had a sheet metal cover for the tender backup light, which hid the side locomotive numbers. I need to make three of them from styrene, I have a brass rod the diameter needed and my plan is to cut strips the right width, then melting them over the top of that rod to make a ‘U’ shape.