A bit of a long wait for the next update, terribly sorry about that! Mixed weather and life events meant progress on getting everything up to speed was slower than anticipated! I got all parts painted, and at the time of writing all I have left to do is some small touch up work and re-assemble the coach! Photos below show the parts all together after a final clear coat dried, a slightly modified observation deck, and a busted air tank being glued back to the body.

Unfortunately the window issue won't be solved as soon as I was hoping for, so for now we'll be running with the original poor condition windows, and what was broken entirely will have makeshift plastic glazing behind the gaps. The plan is to 3D model and print replica windows, before making a mold and pouring replacements! As this project will take some time and not be in the near future, it will likely get it's own page down the line!

Today I realized I sprayed a handful of parts in the wrong color, oops! Thankfully this is an easy fix and as I'm typing this up, theyre drying to get clear coated tomorrow after work. Parts that are still not painted at all are one door that needed re-stripped, steps, and interior pieces, as I am unsure if I am going to do an interior. I may call the project done before that point, we will see.

The past week has been a continual spout of weather that isn't ideal for spraying parts. As I lack an indoor space that is usable to paint, I am at the mercy of mother nature. Generally it has been far too windy to get a good application, which gives good coverage and finish. Despite this on and off some parts have made slow progress. The main issue however is the carbody of the coach, as it needs near-perfect conditions to give clear coat.

A handful of parts got sprayed with their final two layers of clear coat, while others are just getting their first batch of black. Due to limited space to store parts while they dry/cure without fumes throughout the house, and limited time, things are done in rather small batches. Below is a photo of a few parts of the observation deck in black. The deck itself may get a top coat of grey in certain areas.

Yesterday I masked the lower stripe, and sprayed the coach to get the gaps taken care of. Today after I got home from work I unmasked the coach and painted the glass lenses of the marker lights with a metallic acrylic craft paint. The green looks very nice, the red however is kind of a let down, but I am still happy enough with it. Once this is dry, I'll give the coach one more look over before beginning the satin clear coat.

The roof got resprayed previously in black, it too will get a satin clear coat to make sure the entire car looks uniform. This evening I'll be spending time also prepping all the underbody and platform details for painting.

After the first coat of grey went on, the livery went on rather smoothly and came out quite nice so far. I made some plastic "jigs" to help keep the stripe height current during the masking process. Hopefully these won't be lost by the time I do another coach, hopefully within the year!

Below are some photos of the coach in various states up to the current day. I still have some work to do, the bottom white stripe has dips at every set of rivets, this is the result of the incorrect spray order and masking. This is an easy fix by remasking everything except that stripe.

As of writing, all that is left is to fix the white stripe on both sides, clear coat the model, and apply a metallic paint to the marker lights on top of the clear coat. This is to hopefully result in them looking glassy when in operation. Once that is done, it will mostly be finishing the other pieces before we can begin reassembly.

As mentioned in the post below, we ran into a few issues during the paint removal and preperation for the new paintjob. I made the decision to accept the windows as they were, and hoped the livery would look good enough to be happy with it. The interior was mostly removed, and a new one is planned to be installed using a false bottom floor above what remains of the original.

I also made a mistake during this coach's painting process. I had previously painted Monon units in a specific color order, red, white, then grey, and lastly any black. Unfortunately I got too excited during brief warm weather patches during late winter at the start of this year. This resulted in my spraying on the grey first. Thankfully this didn't cause too much hassle.

Above is the coach during stripping, in a tub that would be sealed to keep fumes contained, it was tipped slightly here to help drain the particles off the model. The coach was rotated and done one side then the other. Most of the end portions were also in this bath to be stripped of their original paint. Below is a photo of the coach with the first coat of grey applied. You'll notice how many windows had to be left and masked in place, along with the marker lamps that couldn't be removed.

This project started almost six months before this page was made, so there is quite a lot that was never documented. I found the coach online, custom painted for (presumably) the previous owner's fictional. I acquired the car, an Aristocraft six-axle heavyweight observation car, in December of '24. Work began to strip the coach. The coach's box shows it was originally an undecorated model from Aristocraft.

Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience at the time, I was unaware of the fact that the stripping medium would lead to cracking in the acrylic windows. We also found out at the start that the floor panels and windows had, mostly, been glued into place with a plastic weld medium, resulting in many windows being ruined and left in the model.

Seen above is the coach upon arrival, I didn't notice until recently that it was lacking the vestibule doors, oopsies. Seen below is me looking at the HO Scale IHC Monon heavyweight compared to the HO Rivarossi Monon EMD E8, as it was an option for motive power in G scale.