The question no one is asking is, how could P2K have gotten it so wrong?
They've done excellent work in the past, and their earlier release of SD7s
had a very good light gray on top. Water over the dam, I guess.
I'm not quite as sanguine as Dave Lotz about the masking/repainting
solution. Problem is the stripes on the ends of the hoods are also too dark
(though on my model, at least, maybe not quite as dark as the roof). Still,
they'd be a pain to mask and repaint. And if you repaint the roof too light
without repainting the stripes, they'll stick out like a ... well, sore
nose.
Looking over my other blackbirds (Proto SD7, Atlas S2, Kato NW2, and
Stewart VO1000), it's clear that each manufacturer used a slightly
different gray paint. Some are a little lighter or darker, some a little
"warmer" or "cooler." And I'm afraid in each case the stripes match the
roof. Fortunately the gray isn't as bad on any of these models as on the
Proto GP7, but put 'em all together in a row, and you can't help noticing
the differences.
The gray roof on Proto's GP7 is unacceptably dark, and no doubt I will mask
and repaint it at some point, but I'm not inclined to repaint my entire
collection -- and certainly not their nose stripes! I suspect the solution
for most modelers may require a little finesse.
As Al Armitage pointed out years ago, in order to paint our models as
realistically as possible, we should not aim to replicate the "true" color
of the thing itself; we want to paint the color of the light that is
reflected off of it -- which depends in turn on the color of the sky and
other background, the angle and intensity of sunlight, and a host of other
factors (as they come together on our layouts). Moreover, as we all know,
paint in the real world weathers over time, bleaching in the sun and
accumulating both internally produced and environmental "deposits". So we
can justify slight variations (within reason) in the color of our models.
Unless we are going to have a bunch of pristine, shiny new diesels, we
probably want at least light weathering on most of what we operate. And a
little deftly applied weathering can do a lot to "soften" the differences
between two paint schemes that do not quite match. That at least is the
direction I would explore.
Question for Ralph Brown (or anyone else who knows): What is Badger
Modelflex "CB&Q Gray"? If it's the gray of the post-Chinese red road
switchers, it's probably a pretty close match to our blackbirds, as
confirmed in The VLBG's newly posted photos and elsewhere. If it's the gray
of the Q's graybacks, though, it's probably too light.
Jonathan Harris
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