Oneida & Western Caboose restoration work 1

You might say the star of this show is this negative, taken years ago. The nice part is that it was shot near to the center, at a right angle. There appears to be about a seven tenths of one degree angle distortion between the right and left side, caused by the lens or laws of perspective.
Foresight
Below is part of the image on the negative.
In service
The owner asked me if I wanted to take the negative to Kinkos or Thompson Photo. The choice in this case wasn't difficult. I have a debit type card at Kinkos, now called Fed Ex Office. It's a neat place, very convenient for getting in and out without even having to wait for a clerk. This time though, I thought Thompson might have equipment more specific to this work, and knowledgeable staff too. As it turns out, I was right about that. They have staff that you can tell has been doing this stuff for years, and the monster scanner.
Thompson Photo on Middlebrook Pike
If I recall, the man there said this machine can scan up to 9000 DPI! It has lights in the lid, just for scanning negatives. I certainly had come to the right place. I'll be posting parts of the large scan in these articles, but not the entire image. I hope to put that in a public FTP directory with a link for those interested. Below is the scanner at Thompson Photo. They're located at:
2019 Middlebrook Pike, Knoxville Tn. (865) 637-0215
Monster Scanner at Thompson Photo
I haven't worked with a negative like this before, so some adjustments were necessary; we had to scan it twice. The staff there was courteous and accommodating. The man pointed out that there is only so much clarity in the negative, that after a certain point, enlarging it won't add clarity. My reasoning is that I want the scanner to enlarge the image; that way I'll only be dealing with graininess, not graininess and pixelation as I enlarge the image with a computer. After the second scan, I inadvertently took the negative home. I decided to try putting it in a digital microscope, since it lights from below the material being examined. Below are two samples of the results; the top one is from the scan, the lower one from the microscope, at 60X. I'll refer to both as I work, but it looks as though the scan will carry the day.
from the scanner
from the microscope
It was agreed that I would only paint over the sides of the caboose, to cover the lettering from restoration work #2. That has been done, with Dupont Imron from Premier Automotive finishes. Here's some contact info:
https://plus.google.com/116334491293664244483/about?gl=us&hl=en
I've always had good results buying from Premier Automotive Colors.
What's special in this case is their ability to match the color. The paint that is below the Imron is an entirely different paint. It's like an acrylic DTM product, applied with a roller. It's not as glossy as the Imron, and not as hard. It's a durable product to be sure, but the point is that matching it must have been a difficult task. There are two OWTX cabooses, the one at Whit Lumber is the original green color scheme; this gray one is located at a farm near Knoxville Tn. My guess is that the color has been changed to this gray so that there's less visual impact on the neighbors. Below is a picture from after I painted over the sides. Can you tell where the two types of paint meet?
Fresh paint
The dotted lines show the edge of the new paint:
Nice color match
Here are the links to the other restoration pages:
Restoration of OWTX caboose links