Disassemble

If you really want to do a good job I think you will need to disassemble the locomotive to some degree.  Stripping paint from a locomotive (or car) entails some scrubbing and I use either a paint brush or a soft toothbrush for this.  Most paint comes off now with 91% isopropyl alcohol.  It is very easy to remove or break details off and this includes handrails.  If you are going to repaint then removing window glass and headlights make it a lot easier to paint without masking.

You can paint over already applied paint but a lot of times this results in too thick of paint as you may need a gray primer, the base coat, the scond color, a gloss coat for decaling and finally the duller finish coat.

Hand painting almost always is not as good as an airbrush paint job.

Thanks Tom, I was gonna

Thanks Tom,

I was gonna disassemble the loco completely and strip paint from each component individually. I have looked over prototype photos of the Espee 1802 and that appears the closest match. It does not seem overly complex in terms of what colour goes where.

I have 99.9 Isopropyl alcohol here. Would that be too strong for the stripping? Would it destroy or deform the plastic somehow?

Also, do I simply set each component in a bath of alcohol like an airtight container or would long exposure ruin the finer detail by dissolving this to an extend?

Those are the type of things I am not clear on...

Thanks,

Henk

99.9% Alcohol

I have used 99.9% alcohol to strip the paint from a HO scale Kato locomotive. I left the model submerged in the alcohol for over a week. I scrubbed and checked the model daily, and found that the alcohol did not harm the shell at all. After a week in the alcohol I was pretty happy with the results, most of the paint was removed, but still a little bit stuck in the grills, fans, and some left in the cracks between the long hood doors. After a coat of primer and a couple coats of paint it looks really good. Good luck! Scott

Stripping?

Look at the colors of paint involved, are you going darker?  The paint that is already on may become your base paint.  I did a small switcher engine recently.  The one I got was B&O blue with white stripes.  What I wanted was Black, with the same white stripe for IC.  I masked off the white stripes and used a rattle can of flat black.  Removed the mask from the stripes and I was done.  Sometimes you don't have to make it harder than it already is.

The other thing that helped was that the engine was new in the box, so getting the hood off the chassis was the only disassembly I had to do.  In fact, the engine (and the mate I was matching up) are on their way back to me tomorrow with DCC installed.  So now I have to install the railings and couplers.