Rapido's Proto-Paint

As mentioned in a past post Peter and I visited Rapido last week for a dealers open house and BBQ. A new item that caught my eye was their new line of paint, Proto-Paint. As per their web site and what we were told the paint is colour-matched to real paint chips for the most accurate colours possible. All their railroad paints dry to a decal-ready gloss finish and their weathering shades dry to a flat finish. Rapido's paint is manufactured for them here in Canada a short distance from their offices. This way Rapido can keep a close eye on production. We saw some of the paint applied to test strips in both gloss and flat finsih...and it looks great.

Rapido's Dan Darnell is the man behind the Proto-Paint line of water-based acrylics. This is a high-quality railroad paint which one can spray right out of the bottle then cleaned-up with Windex. Sure sounds simple. Their first release will start with a variety of 47 different US and Canadian colours, including such basics as Grimy Black, Slag Brown and Stencil White. They will be adding more colours every month.

Included in this first offering is the CN and CP colours. For CV fans these are the colours  that are wanted for diesel engines. The green and golds, the red-orange and black plus colours for the cabooses. Rapido even has CN boxcar red for our rolling stock. For more contemporary modelers there are Amtrak and VIA colours. In the works are NH and Conrail shades that will be out shortly along with weathering tones...check out their web site for more details...HAPPY CANADA DAY...George Dutka