SCOX Covered Hopper...well, ex SCOX now.

Friend Brian asked if I'd weather this covered hopper car for him, and then asked if maybe I'd like to re-letter it for him as JSSX.  My shortline has a few covered hopper cars already, although they are the rib-sided type. I thought it might be a nice idea to have one interchanged - permanently - over to Brian's railroad.

I looked on-line for reference photos of these SCOULAR cars, but there weren't many available, so I just free-styled the weathering on this one.

I first dull-coated the car using Testors from the rattle can.  It's either that or wash it with soap and water to prevent the acrylic paints I'm going to use from beading up.

Anyway, after the Dullcote, I sprayed the car with thinned Craftsmart Yellow to fade the original paint and take the shine right down to flat. The top half (roughly) of the car was given a couple more layers of the yellow than the lower half. I figure the upper half would receive more of a beating from sun and rain, and so should be faded a bit more. I also gave two of the hatches on the roof a couple of extra passes with the airbrush to fade them a bit more than the other two.

I dull-coated again to protect the fresh acrylic layer, and then brushed on grime streaks with Winsor and Newton black that I thin down with Micro-Sol. I also went over the walkways with the black.

You can see the grime streaks, but they are not really obvious, and that's just as I intended. They're faint, and kind of subtle. At first you sort of see them without really noticing them.

I patched over the SCOX letters with boxcar red trim film and then I put the JSSX letters on top of that.  I used black letters because in the white letter decal sets I had on-hand, there were no letter "X"s left. The Microscale alphabet sets only give you 3 "X"s in any given size, which is really too bad, because I think it's a pretty common letter used in railroad freight car reporting marks.

On one side I re-painted two panels, again using the boxcar red trim film.  The film went on smooth as could be. I also patched over the lube plates and added new ones.

The wheels and trucks are done too, with my usual "go-to" Krylon Camouflage Brown and then rust and black weathering powders over top of that. A couple of really light passes along the length of the lower portion of the car with weathered black. 

Dullcote (again) finishes everything off. So altogether, that's 3 layers of Dullcote.

Here's the wheels and trucks done, and then the rest of the covered hopper.