Soo Line GP-35 as shown by Athearn model locomotive
Purdue Locomotive Project
A couple of years ago I got the idea that I wanted to make some custom locomotives. The first project idea was to paint and model a locomotive to look like one of the locomotives that operates on the Louisville and Indiana Railroad (L&I). The L&I is a shortline railroad that runs from Jeffersonville, Indiana to Indianapolis, Indiana. However this project was sidelined to allow me time to find the right paints and better equipment to paint the locomotive.
After some time of not being able to work on the L&I locomotive, I came up with the idea to create a paint job for a locomotive that would combine two things. These two things are my life as a student at Purdue and an interest in road freight locomotives. I began to think about what model of locomotive that I wanted to use for this project. I thought about going with another locomotive of the same model that I had set aside for the L&I paint project. In the end though, I opted to use a locomotive that we had in our collection but was never used. The chosen locomotive was a Soo Line GP-35 #722.
Soo Line GP-35 as shown by Athearn model locomotive
Now that the locomotive had been chosen, it was time to come up with a paint scheme. Naturally, since I went to Purdue University I wanted the colors of the locomotive to be Black and Gold. One railroad that used to operate in Indiana was the Monon. This railroad also had gold and black as their colors for their freight locomotives. Looking through various pictures on the internet, I came up with a basic idea of how I wanted to have the paint scheme. With a little personal touch and some modifications, I decided to follow the Monon paint scheme that they used. I then went to a website called The Railroad Paintshop and pulled up a drawing of an EMD GP-35. With my trusty mouse in hand I used the default paint program that comes with Windows operating systems to color in the drawing to my desired paint scheme.
Purdue GP-35 concept sketch
Some minor details followed after I came up with the paint scheme for the locomotive. For most people these things would probably seem to be rather unimportant or easy to figure out. However, I wanted to work through ideas to make sure that it would look as realistic as could be. Therefore I spent time thinking about what the number and reporting marks should be along with how to place 'Purdue' along the side of the locomotive. Most railroads have three or four letter reporting marks (i.e. BNSF, SOU, PRR, NYC). I decided to follow what the Southern Railroad did for reporting marks and use PUR for my locomotive. The number for this locomotive I wanted to have as something that was significant to my time at Purdue. I had thought about numbering 2004 for the year I graduated, but opted to use 9904 for the five years that I spent at Purdue. As far as the lettering of Purdue, the numbers, and reporting marks, I opted to just use a Gothic Condensed railroad font from Micro-Scale decals. Although some of this may not make sense right now, continue onto the next pages to see the progress of creating the locomotive.
Continue on to the Painting Process