# Prepping and Painting a Brass Climax Locomotive



## mtoney (Oct 6, 2012)

Thought I would document the process I use to paint an old PFM/United bras Climax engine. First step with any brass engine is any mechanical upgrades or debugging needed for it to run smooth. This is all best done before painting as sometimes you have to take the engine apart several times. In my engines case, the main gearbox needed disassembled to remove rock hard grease and a new NWSL 1630-9 can motor. I made up a motor mount from strip brass and soldered it to the chassis. I normaly use Canon CN/EN22 motors but I wanted space for a sound decoder in the future. I also hand drilled both headlights to allow working lights to be installed. From the picture you can see all the main parts, 2 trucks, central gear box, cylinder assembly, main frame and boiler/superstructure. The trucks will get blackened with metal blackener and the cylinders I will hand paint. I normaly run the boiler/cab assembly and the bare frame thru the dishwasher to degrease them. The frame and boiler have just came out of the oven after being primed with a etching primer. I bake at 175'F for 45 min. Of coarse if your painting a plastic engine you dont want to do this. I use Testors grey primer from a rattle can. Once she cools down, I will airbrush using Badgers brand of water based paint, Engine Black in this case followed by a hand applied layout of graphite on the smokebox and stack. After this paint, I will again bake the model to dry and cure the finish. I will wait about a week to apply decals and dullcoat. This allow the new paint to fully cure and outgas, preventing any crazing or crinkling of the paint when I seal it with the dullcoat. My logging line is the Turtle Creek Lumber Co. I borrowed the bulk of the decals from the MRR series and decals from Microscale, then add the "Lumber Co" from Microscale's logging engine set. The engines are nicknamed "Turtles" since geared engines are....well slow like a turtle. The Climax will be T1 and my 2 truck shay is T2. Stay tuned and see how this engine turns out!


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