RA1 (РА1 in Russian) is a russian railbus built from 1997 to 2001. It is designed to be used on branch lines where it replaces trains composed of a mainline diesel locomotives with single passanger wagons. It’s a development of a Yauza metro wagon and is built by the Metro Wagon Plant. Variations of it were sold to Serbia and Hungary. Further evolution of RA1 are RA2 and RA3 DMUs.

A display model of RA1 in 1/87 scale was released this summer by Modimio publishing house. As it’s oriented at collectors and not railway modellers, it’s not made to H0 scale, i.e. the gauge is is not 16.5mm. Which means it needs modifications for model railroading purposes, such as changing the wheels, bogies and adding motor.

I’ve received the model in August, and decided to repaint it into "Little seal" ("Нерпочка") livery, used on Baikal lake for couple years in 2015’s.

Paint removal

First step was to remove the existing paintjob. Some of it went away easily with a Q-tip and alcohol, but the base paint was industrial-grade and required a more aggressive approach. I had some caustic soda at home, and that’s what I used, to a decent result. I soaked the model for the night, during daytime brushed off whatever paint got loose, rotated the model (as it’s too long to fit in the container in one piece), and put it back. After a week all of the paint was removed and the model was ready for repainting. It can probably work faster in higher concentration, but as it my first time trying it, I was cautious and used a weak solution.

Painting

Painting then started with a white underpaint/primer. I used an ordinary acrylic can from hardware store. The white parts were then masked and cowcatcher was painted in bright red-orange. Vallejo Game Color Fluorescent Orange was used. That was my first time using Game Color paint, and I was surprised to find it as fluid as Model Color and not Model Air. So, this particular paint it more suitable for airbrush, and rather too liquid for a paintbrush. It’s not indicative though, I actually find Vallejo paints rather inconsistent. Then I applied blue paint. For this I mixed Ammo MiG Medium Blue, White and a drip of Yellow, all by eye. The result looked good under poor quality LED lighting, but the next day under natural light it appeared too dark (can be compared to the first photo below where the photo of the real thing is shown).

So, next weekend I masked white and red parts again and repainted blue parts with lighter blue. This time the recipe was roughly 50% blue and 50% white.

Third to last photo also shows the decals I drew for the livery. For simplicity I made the dark blue waves as a decal so that won’t need to paint it, but it’s clear that it turned out too dark as well. So, in the next part I’ll be painting the waves with paints anyway.