As with the Napierville Junction hopper, this one devolved into a weird saga. It should have been a two evening repaint project, but it didn't go smoothly.
First, I tried to remove the lettering with Solvaset soaked pieces of towel. At first, it worked well until I left it in place a few minutes longer due to a phone call. When I came back, it had attacked the factory paint badly. A litte bit disgusted at the idea of striping the paint from a fragile model, I decided to smooth the marred surface with a wet fine grit sandpaper. It did work to remove most defect. Having learned my lesson, the other side was done with the same fine sandpaper soaked in the less aggressive Microscale Microset solution. Not only it worked, but much faster and without altering the paint coat. Once again putting to rest that unreliable trick that continues to be peddled on forums online. I'm always fascinated to see people giving advices on things they have never tried themselves, as if their opinion had any value whatsover.
The second step was to repaint the car. I gave it a nice coat of Tamiya grey primer and decided to match the color on prototype pictures. Highball Graphic decal instruction sheet mentioned light grey, but on the picture it was quite dark and bluish. Probably the effect of color fading and ambient lighting. I guessed it wouldn't be far from CN Grey No.11, but it looked different. So I came up with a custom mix of CN Lettering Gray, White and Black. Oh boy, it didn't look great at all! Under my workbench light, it looked a weird beige that contrasted badly with the red lettering.
After asking a few questions online to knowledgeable CN fans, they advised me to use CN Grey No.11, which made perfect sense. Unfortunately, my bottle of True Line Paint was dry. I tried to match the color with a custom mix, but it wasn't conclusive. I looked at the local hobby shops but they no longer had that discontinued color on hand. I ended up online where I discovered Badger offered CN Grey No.11 in their ModelFlex line of paint. I was elated until I got the bottle. It was dark bluish grey, slightly darker than CN Grey No.12. What a letdown... the only reliable paint color is discontinued. More search online helped me to find an old bottle of True Line Paint in Ontario. I ordered it on a heartbeat and was able to paint the car. However, this is quite bad to have lost that precious color. In the long run, it won't bode well for modellers. It seems that Vallejo Deck Tan is really close and I think the next step will be to sift through military colors to find something close to CN Grey No.11. For the time, my TLT bottle will be preciously stored... I still need it for a few projects.
The last step was to use the Highball Graphic decals and while I had good experience with their decals, this set was poorly done. The red ink is brittle and flake off... worst, they use a white layer before printed the red and it isn't correctly aligned. Under close inspection, you will see it on the model. I won't complain too much, but I've reached the point where I can and will do my own decals for many upcoming projects. I'm tired of dealing with defective or half baked products. You work hard to replicate a car only to letter it with things that fail in a way or another. I've done well over 50 decal sets over the last few years and I've always got excellent results from the company printing them, in this case Bill Brillinger's PDC.
Anyway, the car is done, it looks great and I'm happy to have another CN subsidiary's covered hopper joining the roster. Both hoppers cost me much more than what I had imagined, but they are gorgeous and they will have a deserved place on the roster!
The hopper looks really nice. It's been my experience as well that MicroSet is not as strong as Solvaset, so it was nice to read that another modeler has that opinion as well.
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