IM 40' Boxcar - Hormel


railBuilderDhd

railBuilderDhd

Active Member
Here is an InterMountain model I purchased on eBay for the sole purpose of learning weathering. I'm not sure it that good but I've learned on it. Please give me all your comments I need to heat them to get better. The paint job is loosely based on a proto photo but I need to look for the digital copy of the photo.

This side I airbrushed
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This side was all chalks to look like the other. You can see how it's not as dark
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The ends need to have some of the spray grim reduced so they don't look so dark
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Here is the bottom details - I still need more dirt and weathering (open for ideas)
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Thanks for looking and any comments you may have.

Dave
 
Dave, it's actually a refrigerator car rather than boxcar. Have to get our rolling stock terms right here. :)

Your car is a good example of airbrush vs. chalk weathering. While both sides look pretty good, the second picture, using chalks, is much closer to how the real car would weather. I'd personally go just a little lighter with the rust streaks and use the airbrush to mist some dust on the bottom of the car. The trucks need some work. If the springs and journal covers are rusty, the entire truck should show some rust on the surface.

The ends just don't look right. The first thing you need is some rust streaks from the roof, especially the running board area. The second thing is that the black streaks don't really make sense. Those streaks would get there by the wheels throwing up dirt form the track on the ends of the car during wet weather. The usual color would be something from a light mud to a darker clay red color. The color streaks should be faint, just dark enough to notice, since rain will often wash off most of the mud.

I don't know how the others here feel but I don't waste my time weathering the underside of the car. Once you've rusted up the brake lines and cylinders, that's all you really need to do, since they are the only parts you can see from a normal viewing distance.

Overall, you've done a real nice job on that car. Hormel did have prototype reefers in that color scheme although I don't know if they actually matched that car style or if the number is correct. That orange paint is hard to weather convincingly and you've done a good job.
 
Here is the model after I've washed off the last paint job and tried again. I did open the file in photoshop and used auto on the camera so the color is a little off. I feel it looks better but I still plan to add more layers to fix a few errors I see now. This is based loosely on the first photo in my last posting.
Thoughts?
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Keep at it, Dave, you're doing a great job. I like the way the rust has settled down along the rivet lines while keeping the flat panels relatively clean.

One detail that gets commonly overlooked on meat reefers is the amount of rust around the hatches and down the sides and ends of the cars. Most meat was shipped frozen and salt had to be added to the ice to get the temperature below freezing. Long sevice meat reefers were almost pure rust around the hatches with the rust running down in streaks on the sides and end of the cars. The rust ran under the ladders so that's a particularly challenging part to get right. See if you can find some prototype long service meat reefers and you'll see the rust pattern I'm talking about.
 
I've got some work done on this car and I feel it looks much better than before. I still see were some work is needed but I would like to hear what everyone things before I do much more.

... and get this I didn't paint the wheels this time :eek:
dave

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Dave, your depth of field makes it a little difficult to see the details on a few photos. On the ones in focus, the weathering looks just about perfect. I don't know if the broken left stirrup step happened during the pricure taking or what but I assume you've seen it and fixed it by now. I really like the roofwalks although I would have added a bit more rust down the center since the galvanization wore off pretty fast when they were in service. Did the roof walks come with car or did you buy them? If you bought them, who made them? I wouldn't mind picking up a few of them myself.
 
Jim,
The roof walks came with the kit. I was thinking I needed to add more to the roof as far as more rust. I'll do more to the roof walk s you mentioned - good point. I'll be fixing the stirrup - didn't see that must have happened when I took the photos.
Dave
 
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DakotaLove39 said:
Did you just paint the wheels silver? I should try that. Black wheels look so bizarre.
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I was thinking the same thing and thought why not paint the wheels but from doing this I learned you don't. The paint will run off on the rails and cause problems. When I posted this I got many replies that you "don't paint the wheel sets". So, I removed those and will use them someplace they'll never see the rails.

Dave
 
Here's an update and I've put this car on the finished pile as I have more piling up that I need to move on to. I've learned mush from this and that's what I want from it. I may be willing to revisit if there are some comments that will help take this model to a better complete look then it is now.

Dave

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Looks like an excellent job to me. You have learned much, grasshopper. :) BTW, for a shiny wheel tread on metal wheels, just take each wheel set and clamp the axle in a small vise grip. You can use a thin brass brush to polish the tread (slow way) or a brass wheel on a Dremel tool (fast way). I do this to all my metal wheels as soon as i get them and you can do a wheel set a minute with a little practice. Not only do the wheels look better, it removes any burrs or small imperfections in the tread and the car runs and roll better. It also seems to keep the wheels cleaner longer.
 
Hey rail, pretty good for your first time, gotta remember this there is no "right" way or "wrong" way to do anything in this hobby if it works for you then it's "your" way when you stop having fun then it's not a hobby anymore, keep it up looks great from here:cool:
 
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