Looking for ideas, suggestions, best practices for repainting equipment in public places. In our case, we are planning to repaint a caboose in a park. Our goal is to get a high-quality finish that will last as many years as possible. The caboose sits in full sun in a place that gets a lot of sunshine over the course of a year. It is not fenced. You can see the caboose in the photo below.

We are a non-operating group that currently only has this one piece of rolling stock on site. We do not have a lot of rolling stock restoration experience in our current regular volunteer corps, but could solicit some new blood. Our current plan is to hire a contractor to do the work, since they should have the knowledge and equipment to do a professional job. We have talked to some auto body shops just to get advice and they suggested we look for a truck painter. Before we go down that road, I thought I'd ask here for advice and ideas to consider.

Thanks,
Paul

Paul Krueger
Secretary
Cascade Rail Foundation
"Remembering the Milwaukee Road in Washington"
http://www.milwelectric.org

101_4564 by pwkrueger, on Flickr

Your query reminded me of how this RR museum in Texas used a mobile heavy equipment painting contractor to repaint some cars and a locomotive. It looks like the contractor put up a visqueen (plastic sheeting) tent around the cars: http://www.texasrrmuseum.org/roster/50.html

The contractor they used is Cherokee Coatings: http://www.cherokeepaint.com/equipment-painting/

I'm not an expert and this is not an endorsement, however from looking at photos of the repainted cars online, the final product by the contractor looks excellent, down to the stenciling and small details. See photos below.

These images are hosted from the Houston Railroad Museum website.

Painting in progress:



A finished SP caboose:

Up front...my son is an employee.

Contact John Rimmasch or Mike Lewis, at Wasatch Railroad Contractors. They have significant experience in portable painting systems (on-site painting) on railroad equipment. Mike has design experience and can produce the necessary stenciling for a more complete job (but then I'm bragging on my eldest).

sc 'doc' lewis

I helped with a project which was recently completed in a town here in NJ where the steel caboose was located in a park. There was plenty of environmental concerns on everyone’s parts. There was really no budget to do the work so doing it cheap was key.

Step one was having the layers of paint checked for lead by a professional concern. This was not expensive. If its lead, then that is a problem and the project gets expensive quickly.

We did not have a lead problem so the next step was to remove the paint without making a huge mess. After lots of experimentation, we used industrial grade wire wheels with tarps on the ground to catch the material. This worked quite well but was indeed a lot of work. We made it a point not to work on windy days. Simply sanding is a bad idea as the paint dust then blows all over. Wire wheel material tends to fall to the ground quickly.

For primer we used Sherwin Williams KEM BOND® HS UNIVERSAL METAL PRIMER and then an Sherwin-Williams industrial paint over that. We rolled it to prevent over spray and odor issues with the neighbors.

Hope this helps,
J.R. May

I'd certainly use a contractor with experience in painting large outdoor steel structures like tanks or trucks if possible. That said, if you must go it alone, I recommend stripping with techniques that do not produce small particles that can be easily windborne, like aircraft stripper and hat gun / scraper. The aircraft stripper turns multiple layers to a mud which you can scrape off, down onto a tarp. The hat gun also softens multiple layers into a puttylike consistency, and when the softened layers are scraped off and fall onto a tarp, harden into a potato chip like consistency. The heat gun technique leaves less chemical residue to dispose of.

Surface prep and using paint systems designed to work together will provide the best results.

dave

If you have not already done so, avail yourself of the search feature on this forum as the topic of paint has been discussed before, which much useful information.

Your local paint store can probably put you in touch with contractors who normally work with industrial paints. We have usually found that professional applicators give better results than our in house efforts, but when time or budget have been limited, we have done our own work.

If the existing paint is adhering well and you don't want to go down to bare metal, there are body fillers that can be used to take care of chipped areas or other imperfections.

We no longer paint with industrial enamels except where the surface is not exposed to sunlight. We went through three paint jobs on a caboose over fifteen years or so, all of which faded from bright red to pink. We now work with Sherwin Williams products and for our caboose they recommended their Hi-Solids Polyurethane as a top coat with Macropoxy undercoat. The paint has not been on long enough to render final judgement, but so far there is no evidence of loss of color although there have been minor adhesion issues with the Macropoxy where surface preparation was inadequate.

We have also previously used a Sherwin Williams topcoat called "Acrolon" and had good results with a contractor doing the work.

Most recently our paint rep recommended we try their acrylic product (Shercryl). This is a water based paint and easy to work with, and they claim color retention similar to HS Poly. We are experimenting with this on one car.

As Dave said, good surface prep and following the manufacturer's recommended paint system are keys to a good result.

- Alan Maples

Comment about lettering, etc.

Don't go full tilt with paint removal until you have documented the lettering and numbers on the car. Trace the lettering and the numbers or in some other way obtain the exact style, size, etc. of the lettering. The railroads designed the letters and numbers in their own engineering departments for years and years. Only in recent times were printers' fonts used to design railroad lettering [example: Santa Fe's big lettering on locomotives is the Cooper Black font].

Other museums or the technical historical society for the Milwaukee Road may have letter documentations and maybe even stencils to barrow or copy.

If the car has multiple layers of paint there are probably multiple layers of lettering. Some museums have carefully sanded off the layers of paint to document the lettering on the underlying layers; and I know of one that only selectively sanded down leaving multiple layers on the letterboard for future researchers.

Once when the California State RR Museum was sponsoring preservation symposiums they had a carriage conservator give a presentation about her work with paint, etc. She then related how private individuals would call up and ask how to paint their carriages or wagons; in many cases these individuals had already stripped off the paint without looking for old colors and designs. Then later that day the late Walter Gray of CSRM related how people called up the Museum asking that now -- having sandblasted their caboose -- how they should paint it!

I know the newer water based coatings are supposed to be pretty good, but I have had enough bad experiences with them in the past to where I will not use them for any metal painting project.

Most of the time it is due to poor surface prep, but a solvent based coating will withstand a wider range of surface prep. Many times with equipment outside and not in a paint shop you aren't going to get to what they recommend. I've pulled sheets of water based coatings off of castings, and right next to it the solvent based coating continues to stick like crazy.

Gentlemen:

Lots of good points being made, as have been over the years on various postings about painting equipment. However, refer to the initial posting on this thread.



Mr. Krueger is looking for references/referrals to known contractors for this task.

sc 'doc' lewis

P.S.
To All:

I apologize...with Mr. Krueger's clarification in the following post, he is interested and open to any and all options on this project..."post away."

All the advice is welcome and appreciated, not just the contractor referrals. It helps us be a more knowledgeable customer, plus plans can change.

Thanks everyone,
Paul

Paul Krueger
Secretary
Cascade Rail Foundation
"Remembering the Milwaukee Road in Washington"
http://www.milwelectric.org

Not out of the question:

If you want to compromise between price and durability, can you locate a local truck shop or mechanical contractor that does painting? They will be experienced in catalyst painting techniques (the stuff that lasts longest), and if there's a local tie-in they MIGHT be willing to be talked into donating work at cost or better.

I once worked out a deal for a local auto body shop to let me sandblast and repaint several cast-iron historical-marker signs for the community in their garage; I did the grunt work, and they let me use one paint pot and two batches of paint blended to the right colors. Some of the signs looked great nearly two decades later (the last time I bothered to look at them).

Since Mr. Krueger's caboose is in Washington state, I tried Googling, "equipment painting mobile on-site Washington". I found a few outfits that might fit the bill:

http://northshoremaintenance.com/
"We provide on site and in house services." Serving Skagit County and surrounding area.

http://interstateautobodyandtruck.com/
"We even do onsite work on a case by case basis." "Mobile sand blasting." Serving Eastern WA.

There must be other companies out there. These are just a few I found in a quick search.

Good luck!

Thanks Rock Island. Your Google-fu is better than mine.

Paul

NOT a truck painter! A truck painter will know Puget Sound Clean Air Agency regs for cars and trucks, which only allow him to paint in a paint booth using that horrible low-VOC California style paint.*

Given that you’re an hour from a huge yachting area, what you want is boat paint. Even in California it is unregulated (except in L.A.) You'll find boat painters capable of painting outside, because million dollar yachts don't fit in paint booths. In fact boat paint is designed to be applied outdoors spray or brush.

Your photo seems to show a pigment problem. You heard Alan Maples’ frustration with enamels. (his real problem was cheap pigments… cheap pigments are used in cheap paints, enamel is cheap paint, and hardware store paint is cheap enamel.) I gather you want a performance paint, so I will proceed on that assumption.


With performance paint, the final coating is safe enough to coat food containers. But the two component chemicals are toxic until they finish reacting. Aside from common chemical hazards, the resin of the “B” part is an immune system irritant that can do a lot of damage if taken internally - typically by inhaling overspray. Since it’s in the resin, it’s not a threat to brush painters, but sprayers must wear serious protection to protect from overspray, which is where 30-60% of the resin goes.

So, painting in public creates special problems. If you are spraying, you will need either a very large cordon area, or fairly sophisticated tenting, because it can harm passersby if they inhale air contaminated with overspray. Brush/roller work can be done normally with gloves and “wet paint” signs. The latter is how I work in outdoors/publicly accessible areas. It gives me all the advantages of the best coatings and none of the disadvantages of toxic paint.

Where do you get an advanced coating that is brush friendly? Marine. Working ships have to be able to paint while underway. Marine paint is lightly touched by VOC regulations. You hear about Awlgrip, that is a marine paint with special converters and reducers for brush. Follow their spec and brush application will “look sprayed”. (in practice this means the surface of the topcoat will conform to the primer underneath, for better or worse.) The gloss can be toned down with flattening agent.

Surface prep is everything. I would scuff-sand/steelwool only, NOT remove existing layers of paint anymore than is necessary to get a solid base for the next coat, for reasons Brian Norden discusses. I’d fill “paint jaggies” and uneven surfaces with “bondo”. Any of these advanced paints will need a “barrier coat” of primer, as their topcoat cannot stick to arbitrary surfaces, only (typically) epoxy primer. Don’t leave it in primer for years. Epoxy is vulnerable to UV light - urethane topcoats are not.



* For all practical purposes, due to Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, Regulation I - section 9.16(e). Puget Sound has a less severe smog problem so they target the "low hanging fruit", and in paint, that means cars/trucks. VOC compliance does not apply to you, so why pay for it in performance and price? The emir of Dubai (he owns Emirates Airlines and the world’s tallest building) went Awlgrip on his mega-yacht - which costs the same per square foot as bottom-shelf Nason auto paint. It doesn’t make any sense but it is true. The reason is the VOC regs being unevenly applied to cars/trucks.

The question is, is the Imron coating system better or worse than Awlgrip from a long term performance standpoint?

Awlgrip's primer, Max Cor CF is $272 per gallon, and at their reccommended coverage of 1000 s.f. That is enough to do a 40' boxcar.

Their polyester urethane topcoats are $225 per gallon. Looks like for brush/roller application the coverage is 250 square feet per gallon. For every gallon of top coat you would need 1/2 gallon of converter at $178. And reducer is $70 per gallon.

So, for a single color caboose such as the Milwaukee Road car, 1 gallon of primer, 2 gallons of topcoat, 1 gallon of converter and 2 gallons of reducer is my guess.

About $1,200 in paint, to prime and then put an awlgrip topcoat on that caboose. Not including any trim or undercarriage paint.

If it works as well as advertised and the surface is properly prepared, that may be the only paint job you'll ever have to do on that car.