Boxcar Kitbash (Part 4) Completed

First up, I'm quite pleased that for the first time, I've had photos of my models printed in model railroad publications.  Two magazines actually, and by coincidence, both are in the same month. I've made it into the August issue of Railroad Model Craftsman as well as the August issue Model Railroader.  Single photos in both magazines.  RMC's Boomer Trail section shows one of my patched GTW (former ROCK) boxcars (page 76) while MR has a photo of my GP38 #815 (page59) in their Trackside Photos section.

I don't even have the original photos anymore, as last October the hard drive in my laptop crashed "with extreme prejudice", and everything stored on the hard drive was lost.  Perhaps I'll try to re-create the two photos in the magazines, and post those here next week.

As for the extended height boxcar that I'd been working on, here's a look at how the finished product turned out...

Laurinberg and Southern 1421, with faded paint, rusty scratch marks, and graffiti.  I followed a prototype photo to get the placement of the scratches as best I could.

As best I could tell on the prototype picture of another similar car, there wasn't much weathering on the end, so I just sprayed a light layer of rail brown on the ends.  The patched numbers at the top looked like black had been painted over the original lettering, and then that was covered with a white sticker with black printed letters on it.  I did my best to try to mimic that.

A look at the other side of the boxcar.  The prototype had the white reporting marks over red patches over black.  I used maroon coloured trim film (Microscale) for the red.  I freelanced the graffiti, and then faded it a bit.

This next photo is a belated addition to the post.

As a height comparison, here is the finished project boxcar, now18 inches taller, alongside another car of the same type and size that the project started out with.

So this boxcar is now complete, and out on the layout in revenue service.  It's not perfect, but I do think it turned out very well. This project was a bit more involved than usual for me, and took longer to complete than I thought it would, but overall fun to do.