GP9 Leaser repaints and future MKT fleet repaints.

[IowaBison]

Hey everyone, this is my first post (hope im posting in the right place) and soon to be first repaint release. Id like to touch on two topics and get your opinions on them. Firstly, ive been repainting TS engines and rolling stock for awhile now, but its always been for my own personal use, I havent had the know how on editing beyond just simply the repaint to justify releasing anything. After a long time ive finally sharpened my editing smarts and feel that im now ready to start releasing repaints as well as take requests. The first repaint which is almost ready to go is a GP9 leaser scheme. This is an incredibly basic scheme to start off with, simple grey roof, white stripes, red body as well as grey trucks. As most of you know this is a leaser scheme that a ton of class 3 railroads use, hence why I havent added any initials. Im basing this repaint on the fact that most of you will add your own railroads initials and this way you wont have to go over an already existing one. I will be releasing 4 different versions of the scheme (every future repaint or requested repaint ill do will have worn versions), new paint, slight oil, heavy oil, and oil with small amounts of rust. These repaints use the CN numbering system so number boards as well as cab numbers are auto gen based off of the CN GP9's. Im at a loss as how to edit the numbering system on engines so I figured this would be better than simply painting the numbers on. So far I have 3 of the 4 versions finished and will upload as soon as I can on here. (I guess I need two posts to be able to upload a repaint?)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x2Zjf ... UXoOc515jG

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Jy6B4 ... _zEBDia7K9

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KNopz ... UCSWadrl2N

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WJWd2 ... xyv96HswrS

secondly, I know that a lot of you (including myself) have been wanting MKT units for a really long time, so im going to be taking up that challenge (seriously those cab stripes though). Im unsure if the MKT used any GP9's, I believe their older fleet was mostly GP7's for their high hood engines, so to start with I may just use the GP9 without dynos to avoid using the GP7 with the antenna running down the side for now. But I plan on doing the GP9/GP7, SW1500, GP38, GP40, SD40 and caboose in the MKT green and yellow scheme. Each engine will have the 4 versions, new, slight oil, heavy oil, and small amounts of rust, oil and dirt. As stated before I know nothing about the numbering system so if anyone would like to offer their services that would be greatly appreciated. I really dont want to have to resort to painting the numbers on to allow for a larger fleet. Since the hardest part about this scheme is obviously the stripes on the cab, its gonna take me awhile to bang these repaints out, but after years of waiting for someone to do them im bound and determined to get some MKT stuff out there for everyone, and ill keep you all up to speed as they come along.

Thanks for for any input and interest, im really looking forward to adding some more to the community.

[buzz456]

. Are you talking about just changing the numbers or changing where they are on the car body? If you just want to change what the numbers are there is a file in the engine folder called whatever your base loco is .dcsv. This can be opened with notepad. You will see the numbers in there. just edit them to whatever you want and away you go. You have to edit the bin folder so it's looking for the proper .dcsv file.

[IowaBison]

Thanks for the welcome! Well editing the actual texture of of numbers (color/digit font shape) I think I can figure out, the main thing for the future MKT repaints would be placement on the body. Figuring out how to move the numbers to the cab for some units, and the center top of the car body for others since they kind of switched back and forth is something im at a loss for.

[ET44C4]

Hello IowaBison, and welcome to the forums!

I am very much interested in your future projects (especially miss Katy in John Deere green!). Unfortunately, the numbers can't be moved on the model. What most have had to do is hand paint the numbers onto the locomotives (a very tedious process if one wanted to make many road numbers).

I would assume you know about alpha layers? You can keep the auto-numbering in the number boards and "alpha out" the numbers that appear along side the cab.

[IowaBison]

Looks like thatll have to be the path I take then. That wont be a bad thing really since I noticed a good number of the MKT's GP40's and GP38's didnt have the dynamic brake grills so that will add to the accuracy of having the actual unit numbers on engines that had them. Ill still repaint a large fleet though, for a railroad as large as the Katy was itd be a shame for guys to model a route from their back yard with units that werent really seen locally. If I do that I can repaint each unit to be unique to itself in terms of how warn they are. Also, I forgot to add them to the list but ill be doing their F7 A and B units as well. Cant leave those out.

[BNSFdude]

Re: MKT SD40-2s, and their geeps, I've got plans to make them in time.
SD40-2s would likely be first.