Getting it all right...

Sounds familiar to you? 

Well, there's been something that has been nagging away at me ever since the GER tram locomotive was finished.  The Great Eastern experts that I know have been good enough not to point the error out to me, for which I thank them for avoiding relentless leg-pulling.  However SomethingHadToBeDone and last night I put the world to rights.

This is the locomotive as I previously left it:

 

 

And this is it this morning:

 

 

 

When I originally painted it, I was also painting the nameplates for my industrial Pug at the same time.  So I sploshed some black paint into the Y6's number plates, polished them back, and carried on with the weathering...  Forgetting until it was all finished that GER number plates are distinctively red as a background, and not black.

 

Of course, as all of the reference photos that I work from are in black and white, I didn't twig to it as I was going along...

 

Anyway, all it took to put matters right was some careful puddling of buffer beam vermillion into the plates last night and then leaving it overnight to set hard.  This morning, with the paint safely dry, I used a couple of small sanding blocks, first at 3200 grade, then at 4000 grade, to polish the paint from the brass and allow it to stand out.

 

Then of course the number plates stood out like a sore thumb (struck by a particularly large hammer...) compared to the weathered finish of the rest of the locomotive, so I used the same Citadel Miniatures black wash to tone them down slightly.

 

It's only a small change, but I'm really pleased with how it looks.  I now actually can declare the locomotive "finished"...

 

Cheers

Flymo