Black River switcher 6

On this page are pictures of the completed locomotive, including the inside of the cab. The inside of the cab isn't a large area, but it is very time consuming. Since it has been in daily use for decades, with little cleaning, I had to clean it once with water based solution to remove coffee and soda stains, then, after drying, wipe it down with solvent to remove greasy hand prints. Each of these removes surface contaminates that would prevent paint adhesion. I considered making vector graphics files of the instrument panel shapes (gauges, etc.) so that I could have my plotter cut them out of paint mask. It's a precise, and even funner way of masking off the parts; but not faster on the first locomotive. Future jobs would be sped up by it, and it would be something to share on the internet. But the shape of the parts didn't lend themselves to that method, so I skipped it, and did them the usual way. Masking the parts takes longer than if first looks, the better part of two days for the instruments and widows combined. The cleaning also took a long time, probably 7 hours for each wipe down. It looks like a group of simple shapes, but that's a deception. There is a bracket near the door that is for holding papers or manila folders. On it was a hand drawn cartoon character who was obviously fed up with the management of the RR. It was an amateur drawing, but a good rendition, so in spite of its belligerent hand gesture, I initially masked carefully around it. I suppose my reasoning was to preserve what amounted to a workplace mascot or icon, and also not be imposing my editing on the thing. But just prior to painting, I decided that I was hired to make a very clean restoration, and the artwork was painted over. The cab is a relatively small area to be working in on hot days, having the usual incandescent clamp lamp in there would have been much more unpleasant. What I used was a two lamp, 4 foot long fluorescent fixture. That worked out very well.
Cab interior 1
cab interior 2
Cab interior 3
Finished 1
finished 2
Finished 3
Finished 4