Tuesday, 17 January 2023- Also, and I think the most fun, was weathering 2 ScaleTrains carbon hoppers. First I used permanent white oil paint to fade them. It worked pretty well, but it was a little two white and streaked a bit more than I liked. So I sealed it in and then went over it with a combination of black and gray powders. I think it blended it together well and brought it a little closer to the prototype photos. I then used some other brown and orange powders in a couple of combinations along the bottom for road grime and then along the top of the ribs and the walkway as rust. Anyway very happy with the result so I started shopping for more. Caught myself before I bought more-I’ve already got plenty of other black cars-tanks and gondolas-to weather anyway. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sunday, 5 February 2023, So I finished the following two or three weeks ago but was in Tokyo for work for a while. I meant to post these then, but got busy and forgot. I took more photos but for some reason not all will post. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sunday, 5 February 2023, I also weathered two Fox Valley GEVOs. I ended up buying a bunch of CP GEVOs which I’ll have pulling intermodal trains on my future layout. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Monday, 27 February 2023- I’d planned to finish up some other projects this weekend, but instead on took on a few smaller projects. I patched and weathered a couple of ex-Algoma Central gondolas for MOW service. I used some prototype photos as inspiration but took liberties along the way. I picked up two MTL tie loads and used a cover up marker (for scratches in wood furniture) with some pastel powder to make them look realistic. I also used some oils to weather an Atlas box car. And then I lightly weathered an Atlas tank car. I tried to use a wash to to mimic some stains on the prototype. The last thing I did was put down a coat of rust brown paint on an undecorated box car. Next weekend I will try the salt weathering technique for the first time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Wednesday, 01 March 2023- Squeezed in a little more weathering this evening with the warmer temperatures. Went ahead and started the salt treatment on the boxcar roof. Too much sea salt and baking powder the first time so I had to go back for a 2nd pass. First photo with salt drying on the first try, second photo is after both iterations were finished. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Monday, 6 March 2023- I accomplished quite a bit this weekend. While I didn’t finish the woodchip hoppers still on my work bench, I was able to: 1) Finish my CP 8781 Hapag-Lloyd unit. Started life as FVM’s CSX #701 because I had a duplicate. Pretty happy with how it turned out. Some before and after shots 2) Finish my first salt weathering project on this Railbox boxcar. The hand drawn graffiti on the one side is a little rough. I may go back and reattack some day. 3) Finish the WC 50’ gondola I started last weekend. Seen here in scrap service. 4) Finish an Athearn LPG tank car. Only one photo of the prototype was available, so I tried to mimic that and then used some modeler’s license on the other. Extremely happy with it-especially the little bit of rust on the hatch hinges. 5) Sprayed some rust brown into the interiors of seven gondolas of various types. I’m moving soon and since I had the color in the airbrush I figured might as well use it and knock this out rather than throw paint away later. 6) Faded the sides of a MILW boxcar and did salt weathering on the boxcar roof. Somehow even had time to take my youngest to a friend’s birthday party at the indoor pool. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Not sure-but I can still see my photos and the ones other people posted-I don’t have any of those photos saved to my phone (which is how I am viewing everything right now), so they must be saved correctly on a server somewhere. Maybe it’s a bandwidth issue on you end-I’m not sure, I know VERY little about IT problems-sorry. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Saturday, 25 March 2023- So I’m moving to DC from Tokyo this summer. Movers come in late April to pack things up and ship it back to the US-so today I tore down the layout both the loop and the shelf above it-and packed it all away. I’m keeping a few cars back to weather and I’m going to build a 6” diorama to display in my next office. Future updates between now and June will be a combination of updates from those projects and eventually some track planning discussions as I figure out how much space I might have for the next layout. By late June or July I might be building a new layout-or preparing the space for it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Tuesday, 28 March 2023- Last weekend I put together a NuComp mobile home as a little diorama. Pretty happy with the result. It has a small LED, some WS trees and foliage clumps, Kato grasses and a Japanese brand of leaf litter and n scale figures. Underneath the leaf litter is AZ Rock and Mineral “Earth”. I used a little Tamiya putty to build some slight terrain contours on the diorama’s plastic base, and painted it and the used Tomix section track all brown before putting it all together. I also weathered an Athearn tank car, pictured above and below. Today I spent some time on gondolas. I fixed up the interiors of 3x Exactrail gons-I did the exteriors a couple of weeks ago. For the interiors I put down a base of brown and locked it in with a heavy coat of matte finish-I intentionally wanted it a little thick for the next step. After it dried, I took a pocket knife and used different tools to gouge the bottom. In some places I even gouged all the way down past the original paint and hit the bare metal bottom. Then I used a rust orange wash on the inside and rubbed a mix of brown and orange powder into in after it was almost, but not totally dry. I locked it all in with dullcote when dry and put another layer of powders down-orange and brown-and then locked it all in again. Pretty happy with the result as it gave me some texture along the bottom. I’ve got an Atlas gon and 6x Athearn gons in various stages to finish up next-will use the same process for them as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thursday, 30 March 2023- I got to work on some more gondolas the last few days on vacation. First, one Atlas CEFX gon-the prototype’s graffiti was too challenging so I just weathered it heavily instead. The next three are Athearn WC gons-I used prototype photos as a guide and while they aren’t perfect, they are close enough I’m happy with them. Almost all the graffiti is hand drawn, except for the two small blue tags on one side of WC 54138. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
All those weathered gons look great! How are you doing the insides of them to get that great look? Probably in the thread and I missed it
BNSF- Thanks-I copied my “how to” below: Some additional thoughts came to mind as I looked at this again: 1) I kept applying powder to the damp wash until pretty much all the moisture was absorbed. I took an old brush and sort of “pushed” the powder into the wash directly from above. I was using more brown powder than orange. The powder will cake up a bit as it absorbs the moisture and that helps give the raised texture along the gondola floor-which reminds me of how rust can build, bubble, and flake-and contrasts well with the gouges I think. 2) after it was dry and sealed with dullcote, I rubbed mostly orange into the gouges. I didn’t “scrub” hard but I was applying a little pressure to the brush. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
