Repainting the Diamond Special

I still had done nothing about
building a layout in the suitcase, but
by the end of August 2008 I started
repainting the Diamond Special train.
I wanted the engine and tender to
resemble some other "old west" trains
that I had in larger scale (one is HO
scale and the other is a Christmas
ornament just a hair larger than N
scale.) I disassembled the passenger
cars for painting, but I just used
small brushes to paint the engine and
tender.

The picture below shows the repainted
train.

The next picture shows the train with the "Tucson & El Dorado" line decals applied and drying. I created the decal with WordPerfect X4. The "T & ED" text was created with 8 pt Cuckoo font and the "Tucson & El Dorado" text with 12 pt Figaro MT font. I printed the text onto Evans Designs InkJet Water-Slide Decal Paper with Janet's Hewlet Packard Deskjet 3915 set to Maximum dpi (4800x1200-optimized dpi). I applied the decals to the engine, tender, and cars as described in the Water-Slide Decals page of my Special Layout Information section.

The final picture shows the decals after being coated with Model Master Flat Clear Lacquer Finish to make the background transparent.