Model Railroading > Some Christmas Holiday Weathering projects

With a slow down in work, the kids off for the holidays and the in-laws in town, I needed to fill my time with something productive, so I decided to weather some freight cars.

The first three images are of a recent run of Athearn Trinity 5161 for CSX. In all reality it should be a Trinity 5201, but no such beast will probably ever exist in HO, so this will have to suffice. This scheme and the HTM / Boxcar schemes are 5201's, the Grain Express cars are 5161's, which I have yet to start on. I do have cut bars and air hoses from Tangent and HiTech Details on order respectively.

Weathering was done with Tamiya Panel Line Wash, MIG / Ammo washes, PanPastels and Tamiya Clear Flat. Reflective striping is from Smoke Box Graphics and were applied last. Modified Kadee 119 replaced the plastic drop shelfs that came on the car.

More cars to come...

Russ



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/19 17:04 by NSTopHat.

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Next car up is another Athearn Trinity 5161 for AOK. AOK has Trinity 5161's, but they are grey with black lettering. The scheme on this offering actually is a Gunderson 5188, which is the ScaleTrains car. I thought the car was neat when I bought it, but didn't do the research until after I brought it home, plus it was on sale....

Weathering was done the same as the CSX car. Reflective striping is from Smoke Box Graphics and were applied last. Modified Kadee 119 replaced the plastic drop shelfs that came on the car.

A few more to come.

Russ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/19 17:05 by NSTopHat.

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Up next is a ScaleTrains BNSF / Santa Fe Heritage scheme Gunderson 5188, which I got in the mail two days ago. It is a Rivet Counter car and is detailed to the nines. Fantastic car! Got a BN Heritage as well. Was planning on not weathering either of them, but as I did some internet research I found a great shot of the Santa Fe car lightly weathered as how I have modeled it on Railcarphotos.com by Dave Anderson. Tamiya PLW was applied with a 12/0 brush followed by an accurate pattern of PanPastels, all sealed with Tamiya Clear Flat. Need to do a touch up on the end sills, as they aren't quite grimy enough.

One more set to come.

Russ

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Last one for tonight, and it comes with a graffiti warning. I was searching through Circus City Decals for some decals for other projects and ran across this beauty. I have a Detroit Edison Bethgon train and thought this would be a neat add-in car since on occasion BNSF and other lessor cars get thrown into the train. The Circus City decal set comes with a correct reporting mark and road number as a solid block, so I removed the original letterimg from Athearn and made the correction.

The Circus City website does have a prototype photo of both sides of the car, which is helpful from the standpoint of placing the decal. Because the graffiti is done as one large slab decal, I decided to cut the into ~4' long sections, and I referred to the prototype photos to refernce certain marker points on either the ribs or side panels.

For some odd reason, this car is the only car in this order to have natural aluminum tubs, instead of mineral red tubs with a white safety stripe, so I made that change with Tamiya Dull Aluminum and the No Thaw Heat lettering from an extra KCPL MiniCal set.

Once the decals were set, Tamiya PLW and PanPastels were placed and set with Tamiya Clear Flat. Couplers are modified Kadee 118's and the reflective stripes are from SmokeBox Graphics. I also modified the interior bracing as it sits too high in the car. When you compare the the top of the braces to the exterior mounting brackets the braces are about a foot to high inside the car. I carefully removed them, trimmed the bottom gusset off and re attached them.

Well, that is all for today. Any Q's don't hesitate to ask.

Russ

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Those are first rate.I especially like the CSX hopper.
Regards,DK

   Awesome work Russ, nothing but the best as usual...

   Steve H...

Very nice work, thanks for sharing it here with us.
TC

Very nice!!  Did you use the Tamiya panel wash down the weld lines?

Outstanding work!  Weathering as it should be - Prototypical.  You can bring these over to my house to run 'em any time.  Great job(s).

Jim

Thanks guys, I appreciate the support.

drdiesel Wrote:
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> Very nice!!  Did you use the Tamiya panel wash
> down the weld lines?

Yes I did. I did mis-speak about the brush size. I used a 12/0 brush to apply the PLW to the weld lines on the AOK car, as well as to a BNSF 5161 that I haven't finished yet. I toned the width of the wash down on the AOK (and BNSF) car with PanPastels. I bought a 20/0 brush and switched to that on CSX and SantaFe cars. I used the bottle brush from Tamiya on the BNSF Bethgon, and will do so on future Conrail coal cars. I will try it on a NS TopGon, but am not expecting to use anything bigger than a 12/0 brush on grey and aluminum coal cars.

Regards,
Russ

Does that make BNSF 668785 a "Whale-belly"?