Some Weathering and a Light Repair Job

Back from our vacation trip, I spent much of my time this week trying to get caught up on weathering projects that I'd been asked to do for another modeler. In the days ahead I'm intending to get something done on the layout.  But for now...

This Green Bay Western boxcar is one that I particularly enjoyed.  I looked around on the interwebs for photos of similar cars in this colour scheme, but there weren't many to be seen. I did get a couple of ideas though.

The "before" photo of GBW 7000

The paint is now lightly faded, less so on the 3 panels to the right of the door. Some rust streaking and a few scratches, fresh primer on the lower area of the door. The roof has been heavily rusted, except for 2 "replacement" panels.

On the 3 bay covered hopper below, I removed the "Farmers Cooperative Association lettering from the sides by soaking the lettering with Micro-Sol for a few minutes.  The Micro-Sol wanted to bead up on the plastic, so I laid small squares of tissue over the lettering to keep the liquid in place. After soaking for about 8 minutes or so, the lettering came right off when I wiped it with a clean, damp Q-Tip. The underlying paint was not affected at all.

The grey paint patches are strips of grey trim film that I cut to size.  The trucks and wheels are painted with Krylon Ultra-Flat Camouflage Brown. The wheel faces were also given a coating of dark powders.  Note also the rusting around the discharge bays.

This CSX covered hopper has had it's paint faded and some of it's vertical posts became rusty.  There are also two paint patches, with the colour just ever so slightly darker than the rest of the car.

And below, this waffle sided boxcar is my own, acquired in trade for some weathering work.  I weathered it some time ago, obviously done mostly with my airbrush. Sometime after working on this car though, I found a problem...

One door is "replaced" and a small primer red patch on one panel as well. The entire car received an over-spray of CraftSmart's "Espresso" acrylic paint (thinned) which takes down the original black quite nicely.

On the car's other side, can you spot the problem?

One of the door posts is missing.  I've looked high and low, but it's never been found.  It was there when I was air-brushing the car.  You can see the paint shadow that was left behind the post when it was sprayed.

So, the boxcar has finally been routed into the repair shop, where a piece of .025 steel wire was cut to size and attached to the door.

 Brush painted with Weathered Black and then the same "Espresso" over top, the new door post blends right in.  The missing door post was a minor problem, but it bothered me, and now this waffle boxcar is going back onto the layout.