Looking At The Bachmann Jersey Central GP7

I've known for several years that Bachmann has a version of their GP7 in Jersey Central paint. This is a loco from my childhood, as my grandparents lived about a block from the New Your and Long Branch in North Asbury Park, and when we visited, it was just a short walk to railfan trains at the station there.

But not long ago, I noticed that TrainWorld was clearing out its Bachmann Jersey Central GP7s, and I'd better pick one up, especially at the clearance price. The reason I'd hesitated up to now was that there's one important difference between the prototype and the model, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to deal with it.

The Jersey Central GP7s all had long hood extensions that housed electric generators for train lightibg:

Whereas the Bachmann model from the box just follows standard EMD GP7 features:

But leaving that discrepancy aside, I think Bachmann did a very good job with the paint and lettering. For innstance, I thought at first that the number beneath Miss Liberty on the cab side was too small, but I went checking photos on the web and discovered Bachmann had noticed something important: given the Jersey Central's standard lettering placement, the GP7 cabside numbers went between two louvers on the battery box doors. There was too little space there to fit standard numbers.

It looks like some GP7s got alightly larger numbers on plates welded to the louvers, while others may have had numbers the small Bachmann size.

For the train lighting generator, Custom Finishing makes part 213 for this in HO. You just clean up the castings, paint them, and super glue them to the long hood end:

The problem is what color matches the Jersey Central green (I think they called it Sea Foam Green). I've read that Chicago & North Western green is close, and I may have tried this in the past and liked it. However, I'm out of CNW green, and we're no longer in an age where you can just run out to the train store and pick up a bottle. I scrounged in the paint I had and discovered I had some Scalecoat Southern Railway green, which turns out to be at least an OK match:

Now I just need to scrounge a decal with the deep yellow "V" to apply to the end. I think I have an old Walthers set I can use. At that point, minimal weathering will cover any slight difference between the green shades. I also added a Custom Finishing 246 GP7 high hood bell to the short hood:

I notice that the Bachmann Jersey Central green is a good match for the green on the Atlas Jersey Central Train Master: