Although still some way from painting our Pullman sleeper, AL1040, I'm looking in to what sort of paint we should use.
I'm hearing that modern acrylic paints are far better than their earlier incarnations, so I'm wondering if anyone here has had any practical experience with modern acrylics.
Cheers, Bob

A lot depends on where it will live...

If under cover, you can use good quality house paint... (or if not you can and need to expect to repaint frequently... and fix the rotten belt rail and the failing window shash... etc... )

Here in the west we have several museums (Rio Vista, Niles Canyon Railway) which are very happy with AwlGrip marine paint... they have even had a factory mix matching SP dark olive coach paint done... We are using it on our next project.

In all cases prep and shelter are more important than chemistry

Randy Hees

That was quick, Randy!
I should point out before anyone goes to the trouble, that I do have as a reference point the 2008 thread in RYPN on this subject already. I just wondered if there may have been any great technological breakthrough in the intervening 7 years.
Thankfully, this car has spent the last 35 years under cover and will continue to do so except (hopefully) for the odd foray out on the line.
In the early 1980s, a lot of the exterior was sanded back to bare wood, (regretably with an orbital sander) so while not 'weathered" it's certainly dry. So obviously we'll need to get a good soak into that dry wood first.
Cheers, Bob

Do not, do not, do not, use house paint. Unless you are going to use a traditional oil type house paint. Essentially all house paints are latex, and the journey into latex is one-way only. You wlll neve be able to topcoat it with anything but latex.

A latex primer such as Kilz 2 will not soak into the bare wood like an "oil" or especially epoxy. It will just sit on top and eventually chalk and delaminate.

Latex will not have the chemical resistance you want for railroad equipment. Nobody expects a house to be have journal oil flung on it. The chemical resistance is so poor that Awlgrip epoxy thinner works dandy as a latex stripper!

Robert, I understand you concern about latex paints (and share them) but...

Increasingly oil paint is not available. Here in highly regulated California, oil in quarts is getting "difficult" to source. This trend will likely continue leaving us a choice between water based house paints and more exotic industrial coatings...

We need to collectively learn how to use the materials available... and lots of minor projects will have problems going forward if we limit our choice to difficult to locate traditional or new exotic coatings.

Sometimes it a good idea to get a coat of paint on a car for now, knowing you will want to properly restore it later... We have too many things needing too much work, and sometimes working to a lower standard is appropriate as a stop gap...

Randy

AwlGrip is not the perfect paint. It is hazardous to the people applying it. It goes on with a high gloss and is very thin showing any imperfections in the primed subsurface. It is much glossier than the original paints used. On the other hand, the AwlGrip 545 primer is the best primer I have ever used on wood. I would use it under anything.

For cars that will be kept indoors, Fine Paints of Europe is an excellent paint. They still sell an oil based Alkyid in California, in quarts only. It is easy to apply, even with a brush, not nearly as toxic as AwlGrip, and is not as glossy. The paint store manager has told me I am not his only customer to leave the store with thirty one quart cans of the same color. It even comes in a satin finish which looks great on freight cars, although the satin effect can take as long as a year to develope. The Fine Paints of Europe paints have some of the finest pigments I have ever worked with. The paint is dense and the colors are rich.

I have, on occasions, shopped for paints at Reno Color. This is an excellent paint store out by the airport, but not real convenient, depending on where you live. I agree with Robert about latex, but it might be worth talking to someone like the paint chemist at Dunn Edwards about what can be done with latex to make it more of an industrial coating. There are other water based paint systems out there. Your auto is probably painted with a water based system. But I am not familiar with them.

When I say no latex, I am not saying "aim higher in work". I am saying latex, linseed oil and silicones are three things that will make the next paint job a miserable task. You shouldn't use latex no matter how budget you are making the job.

Randy, yes I know there's a rampant urban legend that "all the good paints are illegal". It's just not true and I can get any paint I want in the Bay Area. It's not the way things seem.

For starters, Michigan stores don't have any oil paints either! That shows a simpler explanation than VOC laws. For residential architectural coatings (house paint), customers want an easy handling, easy cleanup, quick dry, low-odor paint with no toxicity whatsoever. Latex does that pretty well now, at a good price point. And this put oil house paint into a death spiral where retailers didn't want to stock it, manufacturers didn't have a market, and the new scan-and-automix machines didn't support it. VOC laws came along, latex had already won, so they pegged architectural coating VOCs at latex levels - at 50 grams/liter.

(paint thinner weighs 870 g/l so we’re talking 1/16 by volume.)

VOC regs vary by application. Automotive, industrial, marine, aircraft, etc. With different VOC limits - commonly 420-490 g/l. Which you notice is quite a difference. For marine pleasure craft, products sold in gallons are exempt from VOC regulation and record keeping.

So, why in bloody green blazes use architectural coatings for a railroad car or boat???? Seriously. The only explanation is people “go with what they know”…. and they know how to paint houses…. and they know how to find Home Depot.

Stretch a little (and I do mean "a little", you'll be right at home) and shop at a real paint store. That carries several lines of alkyds, epoxies, aromatic and linear urethanes. My “go to” is Sherwin-Wiliams commercial stores. In Oakland it’s on 66th Ave across from the Coliseum. Tell them you're a nonprofit and ask for the corporate account price. Once you establish that you're NOT painting a building, but a wood railcar or boat, he'll open the entire catalog to you and help you pick the price/performance balance you need. You'll walk out with gallons, not quarts.

Now I’m assuming you’re in the Bay Area Air Quality Management District or the Sacramento AQMD, which are the toughest markets in the world next to L.A. If you’re in L.A.’s South Coast AQMD, all bets are off.

Actually, Robert, I'm in Australia.....
Thankfully we don't appear to have been bitten as bad by the regulatory bug as you seem to over there. Oil-based paints are easy to get here. Decent paint stripper is another matter, though I don't use it on this project.
Cheers, Bob