Quarry Hunslet: Primed and Ready

While I was a little worried about actually having the skills to build this locomotive, I'm also worried about my painting skills after the disaster that was the Baguley-Drewry. I have just invested in an airbrush (more on that in a later post), but for this loco I'm going to stick with what I know and use aerosol cans of Humbrol paint. There are two main changes to my approach from last time. One I'm going to take more time to ensure each colour is fully dry before masking, and two I'm using more expensive masking tape (Tamiya).

The first step to painting was to dismantle the locomotive to remove the motor and the cylinders etc. I then primed it with a white primer meant for painting cars to provide a good base colour for the later colours.

I'm still treating the cab and body separately until I've painted the cab controls which is my it is missing in the middle photo. I decided the next colour would be the black which makes up the majority of the body, so I masked off the tank, buffers and cylinder covers (the purple stuff is Humbrol Maskol, which I really should remember to only use with the window open) and sprayed on a couple of layers of satin black. After leaving the paint to dry for an hour or so I gently eased off the tape and maskol and was pretty impressed with how it has turned out; there are a few spots that need touching up but I can live with that. Buying decent masking tape was certainly worth every penny.

Next up will be painting the inside of the cab so I can finally attach the cab to the footplate before spraying the main body colour.