Just how much paint needed to paint a modern locomotive?

[bigiron]

With all the NS heritage units being unveiled I wonder just how much paint each one used to do a complete overall paint job? As a person that paints I know how much paint can be used when doing a quality job getting all the surfaces of machinery and large equipment and this question about trains has led me to this thread. I would like to hear from any person from NS or anyone with the know how on a breakdown of the type of paint (Imron or PPG urethane type) and how many gallons to paint the whole engine.

I would think that an overall primer would be one first (I remember seeing coal trains come with primer units in the consist waiting for their paint and rust showing up) and if so what amount of that is figured in too? Is it two coats on the finish coatings? Many people can slap a paint job on but to do it right with several colors and make it high quality separates the men from the boys and NS is doing a great job on the heritage units as I respect the added attention to detail! Any help on these questions would be much appreciated and thanks for your time.

Rich Clark

[Mark Gayman]

According to my calculations (231 cubic inches in a gallon / 0.005 inches thick) / 144 square inches in a square foot, one gallon of paint applied to a uniform thickness of 0.005 inches will cover approximately 320.8 square feet. If a different thickness is desired, substitute it for 0.005 above. So, the question is, how many square feet need to be painted on a modern locomotive?

[bigiron]

Well, it's taken a bit of time but seeing I didn't get an answer from trying several avenues but was lucky enough to go back and revisit the painting of the "Veterans Locomotive" and found some answers. It seems NS answered a couple of questions there but never answered several of my emails directly to them..guess I picked the wrong people. Oh well,, that locomotive took 65-66 gallons of primer and paint. The total amount of labor was 112 hours. I will continue to search for the rest of the answers.

Hope that helps the interested people out there, Rich

[JRMDC]

Thanks, Rich, interesting info.