My search for a red-painted Missouri-Kansas-Texas diesel locomotive was going nowhere, so I decided to ‘take the bull by the horns’ and create my own. The M-K-T (Katy) owned a number of GP40 locomotives, and a number of them still wore red paint well into the nineteen-seventies.
Fortunately, Spring Creek Model Trains had an undecorated Atlas HO-scale GP40 on their shelf and promptly shipped it to me. More good fortune came my direction when Tru-Color Paint released color #282, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Red just in time for this project. Microscale decals were purchased on eBay. To complete the project, a TCS WowSound decoder was installed (Kit WDK-ATL-3.)
Although Tru-Color manufactures and recommends their own thinner, I used common lacquer thinner to dilute the paint about 15% before applying it with my airbrush. It went on flawlessly, and I am very pleased with the final result. Based on this experience, I highly recommend their paints. This is the first time I’ve ever air-brushed an entire locomotive.
Here are a couple more images of the finished locomotive. Weathering it will be a future project.
