Saturday 15 May 2021

PICKens Boxcar

 Just recently spent time over two or three days working on the weathering of this Pickens Railroad boxcar of Jamie's.

So first up, let's have just a quick look at the boxcar in it's original appearance.  I like that red lettering beneath the PICKens graphic.  It's a very nice looking boxcar as is.  We'll see if I can fix that...Thinking about it now, I believe that I have a somewhat similar looking Branchline Models boxcar in my storage cupboard.  If I'd been smart, I would have weathered that one at the same time as I worked on this one.  Oh well.

 I faded the original blue with Modelflex Concrete Gray, and sealed that in with a quick spray of Dullcote. For my money, the fade on this turned out just about right.  Much lighter, and quite flat too, like a lot of road dust has accumulated.  I found a photo online of a boxcar that had scratches and rust that I thought would be appropriate and tried to somewhat emulate that by hand brushing with burnt umber and burnt sienna acrylics.
Just 2 or 3 small light paint patches appear a bit closer to the original blue. Done by applying small bits of masking tape after a couple of passes with airbrush. Then, once the mask is applied, some more fading was done to the overall car.  Masking after some of the fading gave the patched areas the appearance of paint some fading as well.

A view of the boxcar showing the roof, and the sealant along the door track.  I tend to use grey for this, as it appears a little less stark than white does.

Below is a look at the other side of Jamie's boxcar.
The CAPY stencil is blanked out as well, adding just a bit of modernization to the boxcar.

After adding some roof vents to the small commercial block Addams Avenue, which I posted a couple of weeks ago, I now have another copy of the Roof Details kit to put together.  This  should help make some of the railroad's industrial customers look a little more industrial.
I've assembled this kit before, but need it again to improve the appearance of some of the industry rooftops around the layout.

This is what you get with with the Roof Details kit, costing about $9.  Air conditioning/makeup equipment on the left, fans and vents on the right.  I'll try to get these parts finished up and added very soon.

2 comments:

  1. Very nice work on that boxcar.

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    1. Thanks Paul. I thought that the blue faded very nicely to start the project off.

      Jim

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