How to renumber and weather a locomotive

When your model represents a fictitious private repair yard, it's not possible to buy a locomotive that's ideally suited 'off the shelf'. We need to do the same as the prototype would – take an existing locomotive, and rebrand it.

I start with a Class 03 diesel shunter from the Bachmann Military Manoeuvres train set. It's a really nice model, but someone has bulled it up with plenty of white paint and a nice nameplate. Lovely for a machine that will be on parade with the army, but a bit clean for a hard-working locomotive bought second-hand.

The first stage is to remove the nameplate and numbers from the cab sides. Using car colour restorer rubbed on with a cotton bud, the printed details are removed, leaving only a shiny cab side. Color restorer is a mild abrasive, so care needs to be taken not to rub through the bodyside colour, but it's a technique that works on all printed detail.

I don't have time to re-spray the model, so I'm assuming that my prototype didn't worry either – opting for a cheapskate rebranding by simply slapping their logo on the cab side.

Using some white printable transfer sheet, I make up suitably-sized company logos on the computer and print them on my inkjet printer. It makes sense to produce lots of logos in case the application process goes wrong. I also made some for the company van, and something larger for the building.

Logo added to the cab sides, the next job is to paint out the white tyres on the wheels and then dry-brush the bufferbeam and chassis with track colour.

After a night spent drying, the model is given a wash of thinned track colour, making sure it gets into all the corners and on those white handrails. It's important to allow the dry-brushing time to fully dry, or you'll lift the paint off with the wash assuming both are enamels. If you are in a rush, do the wash with acrylic as it won't affect the base coat.

To finish, the model gets a light dusting of weathering powder and it's ready for the layout.

More techniques:

Weather a steam loco

Weathering a wagon by dry brushing