painting a loco

[Dylan Knott]

How would one paint a steam loco properly? Lets assume its a class 24 which has only had touch ups over the years. Now the paint is flaking off in places.
Would the old paint need to be scraped off?
What colour should the smokebox be?
How much paint is required and what type?

[Luca Lategan]

Remove everything you can and start over! Primer first then spunge roller applying black in coats. No diesel, but regular cobra polishing ;)

BTW, I tried to upload a pic the same way I always do, but it gives me an error: the extension jpg is not allowed.!

[John Ashworth]

Luca, this part of the forum is for discussions and is set so that photos can't be uploaded. The reason for this is that many members still have slow internet connections and don't want to have to wait for photos to load on every discussion thread. There is a photo gallery section for each part of the forum where you can upload pictures.

[Luca Lategan]

oh ja. Okay, it's here

[Aidan McCarthy]

Hi Dylan,

I would recommend scraping off only the loose paint and priming the exposed areas. Then painting the loco with a good quality black enamel using foam rollers. Of course the rolls-royce treatment is to strip off all the paint and then prime with spray filler primer and spray paint with 2K spray paint.

If the painting of the smokebox is just for cosmetic purposes than a grey enamel should be OK. If the loco is going to operate than a heat resistant silver as a base with graphite applied over the paint.

Cheers

Aidan