Show us your weathered boxcars and covered hoppers

Dallas Modern HO Scale · May 22, 2010

i have recently bought an airbrush and started weathering my cars, so far i have only faded some and am very pleased with just the look with the fade. i want to get more detailed and start doing more to my cars like rust and stuff, can you fellas spare a few pics of ur weathered modern boxcars and covered hoppers. there was a guy on here a while back that posted a pic of a railbox/cna boxcar, if anyone knows who he is or if he's reading this can you please ost that pic again on this forums please!

blownoutcylinder · May 23, 2010

mmmm---I'm working on a couple of Reading--or rather---EX-reading hoppers--

admittedly these are not done to prototype. These are mere representations of what I would perceive to be weathering.

I'm going to be doing some more work on them--trucks were left untouched for example and next to no rusting was done yet---but there we be

Rico · May 23, 2010

Can't take credit for the last pic (thanx Murray!) but the rest are all practice cars that turned out not too bad...

zoegraf · May 23, 2010

Dallas Modern HO Scale said:
i have recently bought an airbrush and started weathering my cars, so far i have only faded some and am very pleased with just the look with the fade. i want to get more detailed and start doing more to my cars like rust and stuff, can you fellas spare a few pics of ur weathered modern boxcars and covered hoppers. there was a guy on here a while back that posted a pic of a railbox/cna boxcar, if anyone knows who he is or if he's reading this can you please ost that pic again on this forums please!

Here is a covered hopper, but I don't think it is as modern as you want. I use chalks.

wheeler1963 · May 23, 2010

Here we have a very heavily weather GN hopper.

Or there are the lighter weathered ones.

IronBeltKen · May 23, 2010

Here are a few of my earlier (2 yrs ago) attempts at weathering covered hoppers. A Family Lines ACF 4-bay, a Chessie 2-bay, and a Chessie PS2 cement hopper - all of them patched for CSXT:

bigford · May 23, 2010

i posted some grungy railbox's

Dallas Modern HO Scale · May 23, 2010

lovin everyones cars so far! getti some good ideas

Laidoffsick · May 23, 2010

jdetray · May 24, 2010

Here is my first weathering attempt, an Atlas N-scale Airslide hopper.

- Jeff

Trucklover · May 24, 2010

WOW all of you guys have some great weathering going on there!! Great work guys

Charles Smiley · May 29, 2010

I have always used Floquil earth tones airbrushed on the underbody and trucks creeping up to the bottom of the sides. Everything else is pastel chalk powders brushed on with brushes and Q-Tips. Some of these cars were kitbashed in the late 1970s and the pastels are still in good shape. I don't seal the chalk with anything since I don't like the results that way.

The Red boxcar is a scratchbuilt model of paper, cardboard and wood with castings for the ends and Athearn doors. It has the most grunge of them all.

I looked through Joe Shine's 4-Ways West all-color books (I have them all) and I noticed that cars in the 1950s were remarkably clean and free of the rust you see in the 1980s and beyond. I think railroads had more pride back then.

zoegraf · May 29, 2010

Charles Smiley said:
I have always used Floquil earth tones airbrushed on the underbody and trucks creeping up to the bottom of the sides. Everything else is pastel chalk powders brushed on with brushes and Q-Tips. Some of these cars were kitbashed in the late 1970s and the pastels are still in good shape. I don't seal the chalk with anything since I don't like the results that way.

The Red boxcar is a scratchbuilt model of paper, cardboard and wood with castings for the ends and Athearn doors. It has the most grunge of them all.

I looked through Joe Shine's 4-Ways West all-color books (I have them all) and I noticed that cars in the 1950s were remarkably clean and free of the rust you see in the 1980s and beyond. I think railroads had more pride back then.

What a pleasure viewing your weathered models.Very nice weathering. I wish I had an airbrush.
The only scratchbuilt model I have is CN 462305, which I haven't weathered yet and was made by a friend of mine.
When accurail cars first came out, my friend showed me how to carve off the moulded on details and how to add more details with brass wire as you can see on this small hopper and wooden boxcar.
I only have one car on my layout that has moulded on grab irons and details; it is a 70 ton hopper, which doesn't look too bad, but I will carve off the moulded on details some day.
So much model railway projects to do, but I don't have to do much carving anymore due to all the nice detailed kits and RTR cars available nowadays like my Trueline trains and Kadee cars.
Cheers

Charles Smiley · May 29, 2010

Thanks.

I like that CN 50068C boxcar. It's really "convincing". How did you get the individual board coloring to look like that?

Since I made a vintage Canadian DVD I've been itching to include a few CP CN boxcars on my layout. They weren't that rare in c. 1955 down in California around feed mills. Too many projects and too little time here too.

zoegraf · May 29, 2010

Charles Smiley said:
Thanks.

I like that CN 50068C boxcar. It's really "convincing". How did you get the individual board coloring to look like that?

Since I made a vintage Canadian DVD I've been itching to include a few CP CN boxcars on my layout. They weren't that rare in c. 1955 down in California around feed mills. Too many projects and too little time here too.

I used a photo of the CN prototype to use as a guide. I noticed that that most of the boards on the car were faded almost to the point of being pinkish. So I added a little white paint to a bottle of CN red#11 then brushed it on many individual boards and on the braces. The rest was weathered with chalks and a wash of thinned grimy black. Before I did all this, I dullcoted the car; and after all the weathering was done, I dullcoted it again.
Look forward to seeing more of your weathered models.
Cheers.

zoegraf · May 30, 2010

Charles Smiley said:
I looked through Joe Shine's 4-Ways West all-color books (I have them all) and I noticed that cars in the 1950s were remarkably clean and free of the rust you see in the 1980s and beyond. I think railroads had more pride back then.

I noticed this also hence the following weathering on my models except for the reefer, which I went a bit overboard with. The reefer is the first car I ever weathered.

Charles Smiley · May 30, 2010

I read that the SP-PFE reefers that went through the many tunnels on Donner pass in the steam days got big doses of soot. In the peak of the busy season they had less time for cleaning. I have seen some as dirty as your model in color books -- as well as nice clean ones. I have four over-done PFE reefers myself. Someday I'll build up about 10 clean ones to make amends.

When I started this hobby the books were all black and white. Back in the all-black/white days were were just guessing about a lot of stuff.

Between 4-Ways West and Morning Sun books my modeling efforts have had a better chance of success. Both feature all-color.

zoegraf · May 30, 2010

Charles Smiley said:
I read that the SP-PFE reefers that went through the many tunnels on Donner pass in the steam days got big doses of soot. In the peak of the busy season they had less time for cleaning. I have seen some as dirty as your model in color books -- as well as nice clean ones. I have four over-done PFE reefers myself. Someday I'll build up about 10 clean ones to make amends.

When I started this hobby the books were all black and white. Back in the all-black/white days were were just guessing about a lot of stuff.

Between 4-Ways West and Morning Sun books my modeling efforts have had a better chance of success. Both feature all-color.

I'm very limited when it comes to books, but I do have an old video with old grainy colour film footage from 1953 of the area I model. I use this a a reference not only for weathering, buildings, and scenery, but to recreate short trains on my branchline. The mixes are quite interesting especially the wooden passenger car at the end of a short freight train. I noted how poorly maintained the branchline was, but the cars were in pretty good shape. Also in this footage, there is a few minutes of the aftermath of a train derailment with a crane operating. I recently transferred it to DVD.