L&N to CSXT Patched Boxcar

First up, I was sorry to have read that the Woodstock (Ontario) Model Railroad Club has been told they have to move out of their location by the end of the year.  I had missed their original post about this back on July 21st.  They're looking for a new location, but don't sound very hopeful.

I remember when our old Sarnia Club had the same sort of thing happen many years ago, and I feel badly for the group in Woodstock. I don't know if any of the club members look in here at all, but I wish them well in their search. Here's the announcement copied over from their blog:

http://woodstockmr.blogspot.com/2020/07/another-fallen-flag.html

For my layout this week, I chipped away at weathering and patching this 86 foot boxcar over the course of a few days.  The only real modifications I've done to it was to replace the coupler boxes with Details West  #1024, which are a whole lot better looking and better functioning than the stock Athearn part.  I also epoxied a couple of 1/2" steel nuts to the frame to add lots of extra weight.

The Athearn car as it appeared out of the box. This is the only one of these cars that I've ever run across in the L&N paint scheme.

Here's a view of the Details West replacement coupler box.  I painted it as well as  and the underframe of the boxcar flat black.

Here's a view of my boxcar with tape still in place over the original colour. You can see I've applied my paint fade already.  Once removed, the taped areas should appear as newer paint patches. I sprayed less of the fade colour in the areas beneath the door tracks.That GTW covered hopper in the background had it's paint faded during the same session.

The following photos will show how this 86 footer is looking on the rails at the moment, although there's still just a little bit more that I plan to do with it.  I think I'd like to darken the patches some more, and a few scrapes around the door area.  The rust streaking has turned out well though...

CSX at some point took over the L&N, so I thought it woudn't be a stretch to patch the boxcar to CSXT.  Here's a good look at the CSXT patch, which I sprayed ModelFlex B&O Royal Blue.  I used MicroScale's set 87-1301 for 60 and 86 foot boxcars for the yellow lettering.

I wonder if Budweiser appreciates the free advertising...