Leaky Light!

Painting the Boulevard Lamps

Since these streetlamps are cast with clear resin, it has been proven to be tricky to cover the lamp with enough paint so the light doesn't leak out!

As is normal with painting anything, these lamps were washed with soap and water first to get any oils off that would effect the paint from adhering. Then I airbrushed a coat of primer (Tru-Color Paint TCP-256 Light Primer). The torches part of the lamps still glowed pretty good when lit, so I hand painted some black to the glowing areas (Tru-Color Paint TCP-010 Black) then airbrushed a second coat of light primer over the whole lamp.

And still a lot of light is escaping! Mostly from around the bottom where I apparently didn't paint as well as the top. So I hand painted with more primer. I found it helpful to paint while the lamps were lit. 

There it is!

Finally after a few coats of paint, the light leaks were taken care of. Then I painted the lamp Silver (Tru-Color Paint TCP-077 Silver) (San Diego lamps were silver- more on that next post). Turns out that Tru-Color Silver covers really well and any trace of light was sealed in for good.

Wow! After all these years of false starts and disappointments and failures, I have finally achieved an acceptable working streetlamp/linepole that I've always envisioned for this layout. You know, its true, if you really want something and relentlessly keep working towards that goal day by day, eventually you get there! Yes sir! Eventually you can achieve your goal!

Dandy