Several months ago, I was given this ACFX AirSlide covered hopper by Luc Sabourin. It has finally made it out of the box for weathering, and that's how I spent much of my modeling time this week.
The model fresh from the box has very nice graphics
The Atlas model's roof lifts off quite easily
Taking the roof off made it really easy to also remove the metal walkway. The acrylic paints that I use don't really stick to bare metal very well, so I sprayed the walkway with Dullcote first.
The walkway is rusted up a bit. I just used a business card to screen off two of the sections as I sprayed the roofwalk with Rust and RailBrown colours. As I think about it now though, would the walkway be aluminum on the prototype cars, and therefore not actually rusty?
The car is back in the same location as it was in the first photo above. The blue graphics now appear to be just a bit faded with time. Rust down the panel seams, as well as some from the roofwalk supports.
Thanks for the project, Luc.
Nice weathering job on this hoppers.
ReplyDeleteOne naming point - "Airslide" was a GATX brand name for a type of hopper they built, and it operated under a slightly different principle than the later pressure-differential (the generic term for this type) unloading hoppers, although both cars were used to transport finely powdered commodities. ACF used the brand name "PressureAid" for these cars.