What did you do to your trains today?

As promised on the previous page, I got round to my next batch of Take Along fix ups. I restored Edward and Toby's "flesh toned" (badly faded) faces and repainted some of their detail, and took an opportunity for another improvement I never had confidence to do.

Before:



After:



Edward's face was cleaned with a cotton bud dipped in acetone to reveal the original paint. There are still a few tight spots I couldn't get rid of, but I had to be careful so as not to remove the eyes/dissolve the plastic. I didn't care about the eyebrows and teeth since I wanted a more Season 1-5 result, and the current eyebrows were meant to look like Season 2. Having a shade of blue that looks very close to the body, I also repainted his wheel sides to cover up the faded ones (pictured below). Compared to now, the face looked almost "evil" in its previous condition.



Unlike with Edward, the acetone trick didn't seem to work well for Toby. I chose to repaint the face instead, which didn't quite turn out how I thought it would. Some of the paint got onto his planks and bufferbeam and had to be scraped off, and I feel it looks a bit too different compared to other faces. Not 100% fond of it. One of the pupils was redone with black paint on a cotton bud handle, and the bell and lamps were repainted.



In addition, I also (finally) repainted Edward, Henry and Gordon's tender sides to match the rest of them. I previously just made them black to avoid having to match the shades, but now it was possible for me. Unlike Edward and Gordon where I instantly found the shade I was looking for, I needed two attempts for Henry. I even tried using the spray paint my custom TOMY Henry has, which turned out too bright and I had to remove it. It makes much more sense than red or black, and I wish I had done it earlier.