My apologies to any die-hard, blue-blood fans of the Detroit & Mackinac, because this is not a paint scheme that was ever used on the prototype... but it does have some elements of reality!  The D&M actually had a black and gold theme with a round logo, and they had a cigar-band version with a really nice stripe. They also painted the #976 in a bi-centennial scheme in 1976 where the truck sideframes were painted silver. For whatever reason,  the silver trucks on that unit always looked good to me - so when I decided to make up my own version of #976, the silver trucks were mandatory.

 

My locomotive started as a Conrail C420, which I stripped down and repainted in gloss engine black.  I looked for N Scale D&M decals but had no luck, so I decided to keep it classic and go with the straight black paint and basic railroad lettering from Micro-Scale. Once again, as with my D&M caboose, these were hand cut and placed individually, and throughout the tedious process of floating the tiny letters into alignment I wished for a shorter road name!

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I added DCC/sound with a drop-in MRC decoder (#1812) that features the appropriate Alco prime mover. It might not be super-accurate, but it looks and sounds good enough for me!