Firefly in the paintshop

A previous post mentioned how I used a printed tender wrapper on the Jupiter to more accurately represent the artwork on the locomotive. Since the success of that project, I'd been planning to update my 2-8-0 Consolidation, the Firefly, with a similar modification. 

The Firefly was my first attempt at kitbashing and some of my skills have since improved. Comparing the locomotive side by side with my more recent efforts made me want to have a second run at it. The areas I wanted to improve were mainly the tender, which had some poorly colour matched and ill-fitting decals and the cab, which had some shaky hand painting. 

The old Firefly - I feel my skills and techniques have improved I wanted to correct the poorly sized and coloured tender decals and hand-painted details on the locomotive, which were not sharp.

I started with the tender shell, giving it a bath in isopropyl alcohol (thanks Galen for the advice). Once the paint was removed, I repainted it with a darker shade of blue which more closely matches the Scottish blue of the decals. Like my other decals, I'm indebted to the artwork of John Ott. I've used the artwork for the Jupiter as the base, as I really enjoy the combinations of the dark blue and deep reds. I lengthened the artwork in Affinity Photo to create a tender wrapper in the right dimensions and found a font that closely matches the Jupiter's to write the name 'Firefly'. 

The tender after its alcohol bath before being tidied up. Not much to look at, but the red plastic is the lip from the IHC 4-4-0 tender. The rest is a Roundhouse 4-4-0 tender shell with a slice taken out the middle to lower it. 

The wrapper was printed on good quality, 80 gsm copier paper. Despite my initial concerns, with the Jupiter project, the copier paper worked really well for a wrapper. I found that long wrapper decals on decal paper had a tendency to stretch out of shape when wrapping around a tender if I wasn't careful. Copier paper doesn't have the same issue. The quality appears the same to me. I sized the decal to the same dimensions of the tender side so I do not have an issue with the raised edge. I touched up the edge of the paper wrapper (which is flush with the edge of tender) with the appropriate paint before applying the wrapper to the tender. To finish it off, the tender needed some foot stirrups. I harvested some off a surplus tender, painted and glued them on. 

I then turned my attention to the cab. I had a dilemma at this point. I really like wooden cabs, and three of my six locomotives are fitted with wooden cabs. It is probable that Jupiter's cab was not painted blue and had a varnished wood finish or was painted to look like faux wood (apparently common). This is the approach taken by John Ott for his locomotive art prints I have not yet repainted my Jupiter model and wondered about applying this colour scheme to Firefly's cab as well. In the end, I decided I would retain the blue and red scheme for the Firefly, resolving to repaint Jupiter someday. Otherwise almost all my locomotives would end up with wooden cabs. As much as I like them, it is nice to have variety.

The striping on the cab made from leftover red decals. 

So, the cab was also stripped and repainted. To do the red striping on the cab I tried applying paint to a flat piece of strip wood and then rubbed the wood over the raised details on the cab. This only applied paint to the very top of the edges but the finish was not as crisp as I wanted. After several attempts, I abandoned this approach and I cut up some red decals (on actual decal paper) into lengths and set them in place. A paper decal was used for the name board on the cab. To round it off, I placed some glazing in the forward cab windows. 

The tender with stirrups and the wrapper applied. The drivers were changed from Humbrol Red to Humbrol Scarlet.

I repainted the pilot, headlight and sand dome in the dark blue colour. I also applied a paper decal wrapper for the sand dome and on the headlight side panels. To finish the model off I repainted the drivers and the wheels in Humbrol Scarlet. This is brighter than the Humbrol Red I had used previously, which just seems to set off the rest of the locomotive. Final details included a bell cord (more about those later), whistle lever and I glued the engineer and fireman back in place. 

I think the final result looks pretty sharp and I'm very pleased with how it has turned out. The original locomotive was a bit scruffy, but the new version really stands out. Do you think the new colour scheme is an improvement? Have you ever returned to a project and refreshed it?

Firefly 2.0 - There is less red on the cab, but I feel this is balanced by the red on the headlight, dome and brighter red on the wheels.

The new Firefly on the trestle.