I'm Seeing Red Oxide

It stopped raining long enough today to paint (primer only) all the locomotive parts.  It was still overcast most of the day but the radar was not showing any rain so today was the day to start painting all the locomotive parts.  I set up a couple of saw horses with an old piece of plywood as a makeshift table and then placed all the parts on the plywood.  

I just barely covered everything with a nice coat of primer before the can went dry.  Perhaps I should have purchased two cans of primer!  I had only purchased a single can of the charcoal black paint too so now I know one can won't be enough especially since I'll be painting multiple coats of the charcoal.  

All the parts fit nicely on this piece of plywood...

Here are the leading wheels...

The cab without the window panes installed...

Below is the lower half of the locomotive including the driving wheels.  These wheels no long need to conduct electricity to power the motor because I am converting this steam locomotive to radio controlled battery power.  This means I didn't have to worry about paint covering the parts that normally would conduct electricity.  That being said, I'll still probably scrape the paint off the surface of the wheels that touch the rails since this part of the wheel would normally be pretty shiny due to the metal on metal friction.

I still have some parts to glue to the cab frame.  I remembered this after I started this paint job, unfortunately.  I am adding little awnings over the windows on each side of the locomotive.  I might add some wood timbers along the bottom edge of the cab too.

The paint will quickly be scraped off this part since the cylinder moves back and forth.  That movement will scrape the paint off the mating surfaces.  

I'm looking forward to detailing the backhead of the boiler (pictured below).  The cab will look nice when I'm done with this project.  I'm still waiting for the diamond plate flooring for the cab to arrive.  I'll need to cut that to size and prime that when it finally arrives.  Hmmm...  that means I'll need another can of primer.

So, now all of the locomotive is painted a flat red oxide.  Even though this is just the primer, I feel it is already looking better than it did in its original paint scheme.