First off, does anybody know what's happened to Krylon spray paint? I ran out of their Ultra Flat Camouflage Brown, which is what I use for weathering freight car trucks and wheels, and now I can't find any anywhere. I've been to Home Hardware, WalMart, Home Depot, Lowes, and none of those places have any in stock.
I've gotten a little further along with my SP X-Post boxcar project...the decaling on one side is pretty well completed now, with I think just one more little touch-up to finish that up. And, I've got a real nice start on the decals for the 2nd side now. I still have to put on the vertical posts in the middle of the car, but this is looking really good so far...here's the one side, number SP 615222.
The thing that set this particular car apart for me when I first saw the photo was the 24 transverse reinforcing bars across the roof. I've used .020 x .030 styrene strips to mimic those. You can see them in the picture above the models. I painted the darker areas in the middle of the bars with flat black on the model, but that looks just a bit too shiny for my liking, so I'll try to dull it down a little using weathered black instead. I got the roof colour pretty darn close though.
Back on December 18th, on George Dutka's White River Division blog, he showed a photo he had taken of a neglected area that had been modeled on a modular layout he had seen at Trainfest. Here's the link to Georges blog post. http://whiteriverdivision.blogspot.com/2018/12/trackside-detailing.html
I have had a very similar looking building - made by Design Preservation I'm pretty sure - just sitting unused underneath the JSSX for a while, and felt inspired to try to do something similar to the one in George's photo. I had already somewhat weathered the brick walls, so that made for a good start.
I used rusty steel siding to close in the ground level streetside windows and front door. The other windows and side doors have been all boarded up with plywood made from cardboard from a cereal box. I painted some of the "plywood" with light gray and barn wood colour craft paints and then went over that with Vallejo's dark grey wash.
Now, I have to find a place on the JSSX to situate the building. I'd like to find a suitable sign for the front and maybe the side of the building, perhaps as a closed down bar or restaurant business. With some graffiti and other signs of neglect it should fit right in on the JSSX.
Thanks for the inspiration George, and whoever the modeler was at Trainfest.
With some home renovations going on in the basement this week, much of the happenings around the JSSX involved cleaning and vacuuming. Boring, I know, but necessary, right?
However, I did get started working on this undecorated 8 door auto-parts boxcar that I picked up last spring. Taped to the wall above my workbench is a picture of the prototype car, with a few notes scribbled down.
I'm more or less following an article written by Mike Budde in September 2000 Model Railroading magazine again to create an X-Post boxcar. This basically involves using Evergreen Styrene strips to add exterior posts to the sides and for this particular model adding braces to the roof. Note the 14 pieces of styrene (enough to do both sides) in front of the car are for the center space between the doors. They'll go on much later, after painting and decaling of those areas is completed.
I expect that this car could take a while for me to complete, as a similar one did a couple of years ago. Decaling those long stripes on the sides is something of a nightmare. With all of those vertical posts and horizontal bars, trying to get the decal to settle properly takes time and patience. The grey stripe decal sets seem to tear very easily, which further complicates matters. I'll only do a little bit at a time and then leave it for a day or so before doing any more. I had no interest whatsoever in trying to mask off the areas in order to paint the stripes.
Here's that previous similar car I did a couple of years ago (on the bottom), the current project as of last night after painting has the decaling underway, and the prototype picture as well.
That big white SP ball decal in the middle of the car went on just as smoothly as I could have hoped. The decal set from Microscale did not include the word "Hydra", as in Hydra-Cushion" for the right hand pair of doors. I had to create it by re-arranging the letters from another copy of the same decal sheet. The trick there was to create the letter "D", which I fashioned by cutting up a "B" and "C". I like to think of doing that sort of thing as modeling. So, things are moving along nicely on this boxcar. I'll show more on this project next week.
This BC Rail C40-8M trailed CN's SD70 #5692 as they passed the Sarnia station, to begin the switch moves necessary to pick up a dozen or so CSX covered hoppers. Those cars included a former RF&P car.
My GMRC boxcar from last week is finished up, and can now be found in service out on the JSSX. I really kept the weathering (rusting) in check on this one, mostly following what I could see on the prototype photo I had. There are just a few small rust blisters and streaks on the sides, but it's had plenty of paint patching done, which I think implies that the boxcar has had it's share of scratches and hard knocks.
I did rust the roof, using roof brown and an orangey rust coloured paint. Over top of that I put a couple of applications of thinned black Vallejo Wash to bring out the relief of the roof panels. The reporting marks on the ends of the car are patched too. That was 20 separate little decals to do the two ends. I thought I got them a little bit straighter than I did, but I'll be able to live with them like this.
The JSSX had a couple of pretty talented modelers visit on Wednesday, as Don Janes and his friend Bill Moore came by on Wednesday. I've been acquainted with Don for a few years, but he's never been here before, and it was my pleasure to meet Bill.
They both gave the JSSX a pretty thorough looking over, and made a number of observations about various aspects of my railway. They looked pretty closely at such things as the rust and weathering on the freight cars and structures, the chain link fences, the oil storage industry and tanks, and the JSSX engine facility.
Don remarked to me that he noticed that there were a number of high-cube boxcars, but not so many that they dominate the layout. That was something that I have actually limited on purpose, and it was very nice to have him recognize such a subtle thing.
Their comments were quite validating to me, as they picked out such things on their own that I've done purposefully to try to create the look and feel of my layout.
Here's Don and Bill during their visit as they had been checking out the street trackage and warehouse area.
Also this week, I've added these 2 loading docks to the rail side of that building with all those windows. Just a few scraps of styrene is all it took to make them, and only an hour or so. Then I painted and weathered them with grime streaks, rust streaks, and oil stains at the workbench before attaching them to the building.
A couple of loading dock roll-up style doors were also added. They are photos of doors from Lance Mindheim's website. He encourages us modelers to copy and use certain photos from his site, so Lance, if you ever happen to read this, thanks very much.
Here's a picture of one of the loading docks in place, and the two doors from Lance's site installed. I changed the colour of the door on the left from red to grey using Corel's Paintshop. I actually mistakenly installed both doors upside down. There are still 3 more doors to do, so I'll correct the first two then.
I took a break from the building with all the broken windows this week, and instead put together an Athearn blue box kit. It's a Pullman Standard 4344 boxcar that I had picked up at a show sometime in the past.
I say kit because I had to put the supplied end ladders, stirrup steps, brake wheel and chain, and wire grab irons on the car. There are also the air hoses, and a package of end walkways was in the box too, but those will be the very last things to be installed. The previous kit owner had already put the air system parts on the underside. I also changed the plastic wheels to new metal ones, and replaced the easily broken and good-for-next-to-nothing-anyway plastic couplers.
Once all of that was together, the weathering bug bit, so that's where I put most of my effort this week. I had saved a a picture from the internet, taken by Thomas Stebley, of this nicely patched car of the same type. I thought I'd try to see if I could come up with something similar.
I like the patched paint and the stencil font of the lettering, and the numbers themselves are two different fonts. That patched "Plate C" label is a little different too. It's those little types of things that kind of separate some freight cars from the rest.
Here's my GMRC boxcar, not quite finished yet though. I mixed a beige and yellow craft paint for the large patches (though the colour came out lighter than I'd hoped).
I blended white and light tuscan red model paint for the primer coloured patches. I sprayed that onto white decal paper and clear coated over top, then cut my primer patches from that and applied them like any other decal. The graffiti to the right of the door isn't quite the same, but it's fairly similar. I'll still have to weather the ends and roof.
I also opened up my package of SmokeBox Graphics reflective stripes to put on this boxcar. The yellow on yellow is a little hard to see, but I followed the same pattern with them as on the prototype.
I didn't find a picture of the "B" side of the boxcar until it was too late. Truthfully, I didn't think to go looking for one before I had already painted and patched this side in a best guess effort as to how the prototype might look. My guess was wrong, but I'm not likely to strip the paint and re-do it. Here's what I came up with for the other side. More weathering is pending. I'll update this little project as it finishes.
And down at the local freight yard this week, CN has this GP 40R from the Illinois Central working. Here it's returning from "A-Yard" with GP 38 #4717 after transferring a couple of dozen tank and covered hopper cars. Besides the peeling paint on the GP 38, I thought the number board was kind of interesting too.
Hey, in spite of the Canada Post mail strike, my order of paints arrived from MegaHobby in New Jersey 8 days after I placed my order. That seems like it would be about normal, so I don't think the strike had any effect on delivery time at all.
Among the items I ordered was a bottle each of AK Worn Effects fluid and MIG Heavy Chipping fluid. I hope to be trying those out shortly.
On the layout, I got the re-painting of the concrete pillars and the bricks done on my industry building during the week. I sprayed the pillars with the new Concrete Grey that I received, and the brick sections are thinned Craftsmart Grey, painted with a flat brush. And the broken windows are installed too, so things are coming along well.
Here are some of the windows, broken out but still on the sprue, with the pile of broken white glue "glass" beside them.
Below is my re-painted building with those smashed and broken windows installed. There is a difference in the colour of the concrete columns between the original section on the right and the newer rebuilt part on the left. I suppose I'll have top re-paint them on the original building, but maybe a downspout or ductwork or something like that would be enough to distract the eye from the colour difference.
I also cut some foam board to use for a base, the main roof, and a back wall. The base and back wall are painted flat black, which really helps the windows to stand out visually.
The ground level windows have been covered over with rusty steel siding, probably to try to keep those vandals out. I still have to make a short side wall and roof for the upper area at the left-hand end of the structure, and I haven't put the loading doors in yet either. I've got a couple of ideas for those, I just haven't figured out how to carry out those ideas yet.
Also through the week, when I wasn't busy breaking windows, I put together a set of 4 steel drums (Grandt Line), which I painted with Vallejo Rust Texture. And then, while I had that paint out, I used it on some Caboose Industry ground throws. Here's a before and after look at the drums and ground throws while they're still on the workbench. I just couldn't stand that shiny black plastic on the layout any longer.
I'm not saying that the Rust Texture is the perfect answer for the ground throws, but it's a lot better than that original shiny plastic. You have to watch how much paint you use on them though. If you put on too much paint, when it dries the ground throw might be seized up.
That about wraps it up for now. Have a good week.
