Rock Island U33B's

There are two models of locos that I've been wanting to fill out my fleet with.  Rock Island U33B's and GP35's.

While I have a couple of GP35's, I'm gonna be adding several more of them a bit later, but for now I'm working on 5 U33B's.

For the record these U33B's are going to be stand-ins as I highly doubt Atlas will ever release their U33B in N scale?  So I've waited long enough, I started out with Atlas B30-7's.  Yeah they are a little bit different but close enough for me.

Here are the schemes I shooting.

The biggest work I had to do to these was removing the plated nose light that they came with.  I simply sanded them off.

I added a 5 chime horn and a side mount bell.  The cab shades came with the models so they got glued into place.  I also drilled dimples on the short nose for 1mm jewels for marker lights.

Using Tru-Color Rock Island Maroon, Red and Yellow I got them painted, then shot them with a flat finish.  They're now ready for decals, then weathering.

I decided to get these 5 painted and weathered before I install the LED lights in these.  While on that subject, these had light tubes extending from the headlights down close to the boards, but for whatever reason, they do not capture the light very well, so I'm thinking of trying some fiber optic tubes for these. If that does cut it, I have another option that I was told about on a forum I belong.  I'll see how things work out.