Flat Car Weathered

As I showed last week, I was at the train show in Woodstock (Ontario), and came away with a few items, which of course increased my already long list of things to do.  I liked this 50 foot flat car enough though that it moved directly to the top of my list of projects. Here it is, as purchased, sitting outside the JSSX shop with the price sticker still on it.

The flatcar is an older model, made by either MDC or Athearn, I'm not sure which. After peeling off the price sticker, the first thing to do was to carve off and file smooth that annoying little nub in the centre of the deck. It's always been my understanding that this is left there by some part of the molding process. I'm sure most of us have seen these in the centre of the roofs of older boxcar models as well.  I've often wondered why in the world they wouldn't have just taken a moment to smooth these things off at the factory, but I guess we've all bought them anyway, so maybe I've just answered my own question.

I used a small square of 100 grit sandpaper to take off most of the paint on the deck. As I wanted to have this car appear to have quite a weather-beaten wood deck, using the sandpaper also had the added benefit of leaving fine scratches that would simulate wood grain.

I ran the back side of my Xacto blade through each of the spaces between the deck planks to clear out the paint that was in between and to give the individual planks some separation and a bit depth.  I also sort of curled the blade around the ends of those spaces to add just a touch more definition to the planks.

As for weathering the deck, I first painted the deck with some thinned Craftsmart Brown acrylic, then randomly went over that in some areas with FolkArt Barnwood and some areas with Craftsmart white. Once dry, which doesn't take long, I again cleaned the paint out of the spaces between boards with the Xacto knife. I'm quite pleased with myself for not slicing any fingers with the Xacto knife. Then, I went over the whole deck with a couple of washes of a good old India ink/alcohol mixture wash.

I added 2 steel plates to cover over some holes in the deck.  The plates are .005 styrene, which I first painted steel grey, and then rusted with artist oils.  Really hard to see in the photos, but using a black .005 tip artist pen, I added the illusion of bolt heads holding down these plates.

There happened to be a piece of brass wire laying close by on my workbench, so I cut a small piece from that and then bent it at both ends.  After painting, I actually just dropped it onto the cars' deck and then glued it down where it landed, representing a pry-bar that had perhaps been tossed onto the deck and left behind.

With the deck finished, attention turned to the side sills.  I "painted out" the MW letters with flat black trim film, then added the JSSX lettering from a Microscale decal sheet. The rust and grime streaks on the side sills of the flat car were made with artist oil paints of burnt sienna and burnt umber. Just a tiny, tiny dab of paint where the streak is to begin. Then a flat brush dampened with Micro-Sol and drawn straight down to create the streaking. Use perfectly vertical streaks only for this. Always.

I rusted up the stake pockets with the burnt umber, carved off the oversized, clunky looking side steps and replaced them with finer ones, made uncoupler bars from a bit of wire, and added air hoses to the ends as well.

That's about it. This flat car is going to fit right in with the work train maintaining the JSSX.