BLS 486 Alpinist -2

Onwards with the Alpinist...

First painting spree:

As with the 485, the green flashes were easy to paint following the contours of the model shell. I then scribed a fine line with my knife above the headlights and painted with red below the line down to the front stepsills.

At this stage, I also added the little foot steps (black) down in the notched front corners. These were borrowed from an old leftover N scale tank car chassis part collected many years ago and contact glued into place. These were done only at the designated 'good' end that will lead the train.

The last piece of green paint that needs to be added is a small panel on the sides. As with the 485, a square was masked with Tamiya masking tape. As long as you burnish any overlaps or detail contours (I used the edge of a knife blade to press the corner overlaps down) the paint won't seep underneath:

 Removing the tape:

 Success!

One final touch before putting down the brush was to slop some white paint where my mountaineer's head decal will go. As this decal was printed by a laser printer (which can't print white) onto clear decal paper, I wanted any light parts of the image to get a boost from the white paint below.