Model Railroading > BNSF 4395, another weathered ScaleTrains model to share

Not making any attempts to steal upmodeler's thunder on his awesome weathered BNSF 4313 model from Scaletrains. Here's my quick and dirty decal and weathering job on my first (of many) ScaleTrains DASH 9-44CW models.

I figured with how fast the 250+ in stock BNSF 4313 models sold out (about 18 hours), I may as well go off the rails a bit and change the number to stand out from the crowds just a tad. Searching the internet located plenty of candidates, I elected to scrape off the "13" and replace it with "95" (decals from Microscale 80-1024 "BNSF DASH 9-44CW Diesels"). Of course the number-boards were changed too. Sorry ScaleTrains folks, but I again went for quick and dirty and simply painted over the old boards with black paint, slapping on white decal numbers on top, actually from a Microscale BN decal sheet. All that design and tooling effort to light them up and I just covered that all up. Reality speaking here... Most of BNSF's DASH 9s still have old school bulbs inside the number-boards, and many are very dim anyway, unlike the super bright LEDs seen on newer ES44 units. So lit number-boards, obviously not a selling point for me. Neither are the stock couplers. Again, apologies to the ScaleTrains folks, but I still toss the stock couplers out and replace my locos with Kadee short-shank #153s.

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That all aside, the model is a stunner, and a long time coming IMHO. Tooling, details, painting, all top-notch. It's Rivet Counter, should there be anything else? Though my BNSF model's coupler screws were both stripped out when first opening the package, not sure what hapened there, but longer screws (I had laying around) solved the issue. I was also curious as to why the unit, supposedly decked out "as delivered" in 1999, has a forward facing in cab camera, but whatever. Since I'm modeling more contemporary ops, the camera fits right in, but those 2000s era white visibility stripes were blanked out with tru-color BNSF Green paint (near spot-on match), and patched over with plenty of Microscale FRA-224 yellow decals instead.

Quick and dirty weathering came from Testor's paint pens, Roof Brown, RR Tie Brown, Weathered Black. Softened, worked-in, and beat back with old weathering paint brushes. Then a good rattle-can blast of Dullcote. This is intended to be a quasi-2015-2019 "non-PTC", "non lead qualified", "surge fleet", horsepower filler motor anyway, so it'll do just fine behind my Kato-bashed BNSF 4449 for the time being. Run session to occur sometime later this week.


~ Mr. MRL

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Looks amazing

Excellent!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/19 14:49 by electromac.

Looks great - nice job!

John Parker
Longmont, CO
BNSF Fall River Division

Appropriate level of weathering for the rivet counter level of detailing.

Do you disassemble the model to do the weathering or can you leave it assembled and use more brushing and washes instead of airbrush work?

Thanks

fbe Wrote:
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> ...
> Do you disassemble the model to do the weathering
> or can you leave it assembled and use more
> brushing and washes instead of airbrush work?

The ScaleTrains shell slides up and off the chassis easily with no wires or anything to get hooked or tangled up on. Then I pull off the front, back, and side handrails for better access to the long hood and nose. Weathering is just dabbed on paint pen colors rubbed and swirled into the details with an old paint brush. With extra weathering detail work here and there. Keeping the shell and frame together would make things a little more difficult, the model is quite heavy.

Mr. MRL

Very nice!

Hi Robby.

Didn't take long to get that weathered up, considering I don't believe you had it in possession last week during my visit. 

Managed to pick up two Kato AC4400 in BNSF H2 colours from Arnie's. These together with a host of UP stuff were from an estate, so some reasonable pricing (managed to stop myself from purchasing the yellow stuff). Have tweaked the Digitrax decoders today, and got them performing a little better. They'll eventually get replaced with TCS T4X's of T4LED's.

Will post some pics once the layout is up and running.

Keep your photos coming, be good to see them on the club layout!

Allister

Thanks Allister, speaking of the layout... a sneak peak at the new scenery as I tested out my new ScaleTrains GEs at the club earlier Tuesday evening...

And a near perfect match to the custom unit number I choose, photographed just a couple days earlier in Los Angeles, CA. BNSF 4394, ohh so close!

Mr. MRL

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Looks good Robby.

BNSF 4394 looks pretty clean in the your photo!

Nice shot of the three on the layout. Can't believe it was a week ago I was there in person. Keep em coming.

Cheers.

Allister