Model Railroading > Weathering Update

Recently, I was asked by a friend for some progress photos, so, here are some cars I’ve completed over the last six months or so. I’m tending to do a fade airbrush coat, then acrylic detail, then PanPastel weathering, with Testors DullCote layers in between each step. I try to weather cars in batches, and my goal in most cases is to get a reasonably convincing car without too much time into it – my layout goals are are to have a bunch of 20-25 car trains that “look right”, as opposed to having a craftsman project for each and every car.  Every so often I get into a car and spend more time on it though.

In the photos -
1. Athearn CR "foobie" gon turned into a MWM yellow-ended gon for maintenance service
2. A couple Life-Like 100T hoppers. These cars really are nice for what they are.  (I own many more Bowsers). I renumbered these to make them H1A's, and added ACI labels and changed the CR logo on one of the cars.
3. NJI brass transfer caboose, modernized for the 1990's.

I have photos of a few more cars over at my website: http://www.jalexlang.com/2017/03/14/recent-weathering-updates/

Take care,
-Alex

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Nice work!

andy
 

Nice dirt and grime. I like the bends in the CR gondola.

Weathering is not for everyone in the hobby, but your work should inspire others to weather some of their fleet.   Really nice work.
Mark
Houston

Thanks for the compliments, guys!  Part of the fun for me is sharing progress and getting good feedback and suggestions.  I received a PM asking about the bends in the gondola car... I found a $20 heat gun on Amazon.com that has a variable temperature control.  After melting the ladder off of a car, I made a small template out of a scrap piece of wood, with a V-shaped notch cut into it, so that the heat would be focused on the top of the gon.  This way I could bend it out with my thumb while not heating the rest of the car.

The gondola looks good, but I'm not too sure about the trucks.  Looks like powder caked on them quite thick. Try Krylon Flat Camouflage Brown as a base first.

​Jim

Jimmies Wrote:
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> The gondola looks good, but I'm not too sure about
> the trucks.  Looks like powder caked on
> them quite thick. Try Krylon Flat Camouflage
> Brown as a base first.
>
> ​Jim

Jim,
Which gon, the PC gon? Good suggestion, easy enough to fix. Thank you!
-Alex

My fault there, I shoud have been more specific.  I like the overall look of the MW gondola, but my comment regarding the trucks was about those on the blue caboose.

​When I weather the trucks on my railcars, I generally remove the wheels and trucks from the car, and take the axle sets out of the trucks. I then mask the wheel treads, and the holes on the back of the trucks that the axles fit into.  Doing so takes me 8 minutes per car.  I give the trucks and wheel faces quick, light shots of Krylon Ultra-Flat Camouflage Brown to act as the base colour. Then most often, I will add rust coloured weathering powder to just the wheel face, followed by a light amount of black weathering powder to dull down the rust tone, and just a bit of black to the truck also. I don't mean that I think this is the only way it should be done, but it works very well for me. I don't dull-cote the wheels and trucks, as the Krylon is a flat finish anyway.

​We don't often really see the wheels and trucks on our models, and they don't always show up in photographs either, but when they do, weathering them nicely makes quite a difference to the look of the freight car.

Jim
>
> Jim,
> Which gon, the PC gon? Good suggestion, easy
> enough to fix. Thank you!
> -Alex