Okay. Cool.

They are right next to Lowes out here. :)

Thanks
Bill

Primer used was a Benjaman Moore product called freshstart. in most cases all sides of the new wood recieved two coats.

Ours was painted on both sides too. Good insurance.

Bill

I cant imagine you guys will be using the roof walk in any fashion at this point in the cars life. If it was, I cant even think of using Trex as a roofwalk material. In my experience with this stuff, once it gets any slight bit of moisture on it it gets slippery as anything. Not a good roof walk trait. As I said, this is just from my own experience of a bow step on a tug..

It might be worth noting that there was just a discussion on the Steam Era Freightcars Yahoo group about painted vs. unpainted running boards, that brought to light the fact that some railroads specified "sanded" paint for the top of the boards... basically pouring sand into the wet coat of paint to give better footing. Our own Randy Hees contributed information that suggests that the Southern Pacific was one road that used this method.

There is really no reason why this couldn't be done to TREX, indeed, it may even be the proper painting procedure, depending on the road. A second coat of paint over the sand will blend the color better, without decreasing the effectiveness of the non-slip coating.

Since it is designed for painting boats (including decks), the Awl-Grip paint system includes an anti-skid additive which is simply mixed into the top coat if desired. It is quite effective.

Sprinkling over wet paint is a fine way to distribute the sand/aggregate. But apply a second coat afterwards.

Slippery material tends to shrug off paint. However if the paint sticks, the slip of the material is then determined by the paint.

Valspar is a common brand of paint, found in numerous hardware and building supply stores. They do not have dedicated paint stores as far as I know. They also make fixed colors for Tractor Supply and I believe they have a latex line that is unique to Lowes (though this is mainly to "lock you in" to Lowes as a supplier; it's not magic paint made with magic beans or anything.) Most sellers have the computer color matcher, so bring them a sample and they will spit out a formula which matches (the machine has a gamut, limited by how much pigment will fit in a paint can. Railway colors can be a challenge.) The formula is yours to keep.

My Valspar supplier can do custom match without any trouble. The oil paint, however, is slow to dry, so you need dryer accelerator added to it.

No magic beans at Tractor Supply. They simply sell Valspar in a few predefined colors keyed back to traditional tractor and engine colors, with promise those will remain consistent over the years. Update: this does not work, as since i originally wrote this, they have chucked Valspar for a house brand. Paint companies are not in the business of color consistency over time. That's what Munsell is for. Obviously those are not correct railroad colors, unless your railroad was the John Deere Railroad :) They don't even custom match or mix. The reason to buy there is price or convenience. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

Generally I am not impressed with Valspar. I've seen yellow jobs that chalked badly in 3-4 years of Midwestern sun, and are in dire need of repaint in 5. No railway museum can keep up if they have to repaint everything every 5 years. Everything looks great while the paintbrush is still wet. That's not the trick.

Valspar has absolutely nothing to do with Awlspar (spar varnish for boats made by Awlgrip). Spars must flex as the sail catches wind. Spar varnish is optimized to remain watertight with constant flex, which we don't care about. But the word connotes "tough" so it sounds good in a paint name.