Repainting a Bachmann Class 153

A friend at the railway club asked if I would paint a modern 153 DMU in an Anglia Railway livery for his brother. Drawn in by the challenge despite having so many projects on the go, I said I would give it a try and was duly handed the bodyshell, less running gear and windows. I started by masking off the ends to preserve the numbering, cab glazing and the roof colour. The sides then got a coat of white primer, as white was one of the two main colours in the scheme and it meant just the blue had to be painted on. Once sprayed two problems showed up. The first was a reaction between the white and one of the original Bachmann colours. Fortunately this was just a slight wrinkling of the primer and was resolved by sanding back once dry with a very fine decorators sponge and applying another light application of paint. The second was the thickness of the lettering, which was also resolved with some careful sanding, although this did remove some of the rivet detail. Had I known what a problem the rivet detail would be I wouldn’t have been so careful.

Once the second coat of primer had dried I started work on the blue. I bought two acrylic blues close the original colours, one was a light blue for the doors and the other was a little darker for the body sides but not as it turned out dark enough. So about a heaped teaspoon of paint was put in a pot and tiny amounts of dark blue added until the colour was as close to the photographic references as I could get. I didn’t worry too much about an exact match, as it varied in the photographs depending on the light and weather. And according to the owner of the model (an ex-railwayman) the colours quickly faded in service as well. I also learned the school kids used to peel off the warning stickers, so there was no been to worry if they got painted over.

I started with the blue band at the bottom of the body which was quite straight forward. I had sprayed the lower band in the original blue before realising it was too light, so using a lining pen I drew a broad line across the top in the adjusted colour and pained the rest in with a broad brush. As it was already blue this was achieved in just the one coat. Then came the problems. The next step was to use the lining pen to put the outside line in around the windows. This was just above the rivets and where the pen hit even just the side of the rivet it jumped up and down, giving a saw tooth look to the line. Annoyingly, study of the photos revealed flush sides and a complete lack of rivet detail, so had I looked at these before the priming stage, I would have removed all the rivet detail from the model, making life much easier.

Painting around the windows was time consuming and I was going to paint the frames a metallic colour but the owner said not to bother, as the window frames were painted on the glazing. Next the photographs showed a black door seal towards the cab end being a sliding door, so the doors were painted with a light blue and the door seal in black but 100% flat black doesn’t look natural so this was toned down with a Lifecolour Tyre Black. Also the cab ends were all yellow but all my photo references showed them to be half blue, so this was also carefully painted in.

The white primer showed up as the faintest of white edges where it met the roof, so this was washed in with a little dirty brown black, with some black soot weathering around the exhaust. Then came the Orange overhead warning stripe. I used a Humberol rail colour for this, which I think is the BR orange lining colour. The match was good, the paint flowed freely through the pen and gave good coverage, meaning I didn't have to go over it again. Sometimes yellows and reds have poor pigment density and painting over the right colour primer is essential for block colours. And because the line was well above the dreaded rivets, it went on straight and even.

Finally came the dreaded logo. To my knowledge, no one does Anglia logos as transfers and being white they are not easy to print at home. Therefore I found a picture of the logo on the web and scaled it in Photoshop Elements to the size needed on the model. Then I drew it on tracing paper, reversed it and finally rubbed the positive back onto the model. It left only the fairest of outlines but enough to trace with a paintbrush. They are not perfect but until I'm given a set of transfers they are the best I can do. Not bad at 22mm wide by 6mm high though.

So that's it, a final coat of Testors Matt varnish, which was allowed to harden for a couple of days and then back in the box for the return journey. Hopefully I will get the chance to see it running in the near future with all the seats and windows in.