Mississippian Railway Boxcar

When I retrieved this boxcar from my storage cabinet this past week, it had been away from the layout for quite a while.  As it ran around the railroad, I was thinking to myself that I had done a good job weathering this one...

But, then I got thinking why not make just a couple of small improvements to the boxcar.

So, I clipped off the trip pin from the Kadee #58 couplers, added a pair High Tech Industries rubber air hoses, and then cut and bent a couple of pieces of brass (late edit here by me, it's brass, not bronze as I originally posted) wire to make and add coupler levers.

A look at the new coupler lever and the air hose

I painted the coupler levers with Rock Island Blue that I had on hand, and then went over them again with a bit of thinned primer grey.  It's worked out to be a pretty close match to the boxcar colour.  A quick dab of grey to highlight the glad-hand at the end of the air hose.

After those little modifications, I got a bit more ambitious, and went ahead and painted on the sealant at the roof seams.

I prefer to use a grey colour, primer grey actually, to simulate the roof sealant, as opposed to white which is used by some modelers.  I think the boxcar looks just a little better now.

Brian Smith sent along this idea for a "blue flag" that is used on railroads to signal to not move a freight car or locomotive.  This is used in place of an actual blue flag.

The transfer/loading facility on JSSX looks like a good place to try a blue cone

Happy Modeling Everybody !