Seeking Advice On Aluminum Passenger Car Repaint

Surely the anodized aluminum would look way better than silver paint? I'm undertaking a similar project, the coaches come this week and it's my intention to use paint stripper to bring the cars back to basic before repainting. Mine will be Santa Fe but will end up Country Link (Australian). I'm a Via fan too, so please post some pics of your results.

For some one of the issues with stainless is that you want all your stainless trains to have a similar color.

After receiving the new stainless California Zephyr cars from Atlas, my opinion is that if you paint, try to duplicate the color Atlas used. Atlas does a lot of research before coloring their products. The paint has a bit of reflection and the pigment is very fine so you don't see any silver flake and it makes it look plated.

Atlas also used the same color from the passenger cars for the stainless panel on the lower section of this diesel. F units with stainless, like WP and Santa Fe, had stainless panels and silver paint to match where they couldn't use stainless.

The stainless color is much better in person.



How to find out what color Atlas used is another story.

Dave Allen,
Yes, the anodized would be great, but these are not anodized, just greyish aluminum as the cars were meant to be painted and are currently painted grey.

Marker, Atlas' finish sounds great! Too bad they do not sell paint!

quote:

Too bad they do not sell paint!

I agree, one of my projects is to find a paint the is a close match, or better yet a match. I don't like the checkerboard look of stainless passenger cars from various manufacturers and will embark on painting all the scale stainless equipment to match.

The correct color is out there someplace.

Alclad II has a Stainless Steel paint. I've never used it, but I used the Chrome paint on small parts. IIRC, you need to spray a glossy black undercoat first.

For your colored stripes...
http://www.railfonts.com/Refer.../Floquil_Master.html