Boxcar Weathering Underway (but not finished)

I've pulled this Missouri Pacific boxcar out of the storage cupboard to be weathered this past week after it had sat in there for a few years.

I don't even remember who the manufacturer is (or was), but it really is a nicely made car, featuring air hoses, coupler cut levers, and wire grab bar details.

Here's an example of the kind of wear and tear that I'm going for on this one.  I won't be replacing the door, but I can paint one of them white.

And speaking of the doors, I have a picture (that I cannot find right now) of a similar car with the bottom door panel replaced, so I've done that on one door.

Being careful not to cut my fingers, I removed the horizontal ribs from that section of the door using a chisel blade, and then cut a piece .010 styrene to fit into that area on the door.

Skipping ahead a bit, here's one side of the boxcar after weathering.  The original black has been flattened right down by spraying over it with Roof Brown.  And of course that door has been painted white and now has some light surface rust.

The rust along the ribs is Raw Sienna with a light dab of Burnt Umber at the top of a few of those streaks. The Raw Sienna is yellowish orange, and shows nicely against the brown/black.  Smokebox Graphics for the reflective stripes.

The graffiti is decals from pile of them that I had cut out and set aside some time ago - not sure of the manufacturer of them. There were no tack boards on the sides of the model, so I made a couple of them from a coffee stir stick (thanks Tim Horton's).

There's that styrene replacement panel on the bottom portion of the door...painted flat black, then rust added.  The reporting mark patches are black decal film, and the lettering is from Microscale set number 90251 Stencil Gothic.

So that's about as far as I've gotten with this one to this point.  I still have the boxcar ends, the wheels, and the roof to complete.  Maybe I can get that done in the coming week.

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

B&O 493027 Auto Parts Box

Last week I posted about starting weathering on three freight cars.  Well, here's one of them all finished up after about 9 or 10 hours actual working time.

This Thrall 86 foot Auto-Parts boxcar is a Class One Model Works model.

This is the Class One promotional photo (different car number than mine) from their site, since I forgot to take a "before" picture before I started weathering.  I think that these have become a little bit hard to find now, so I'm glad to have gotten mine when I did.

So here's some looks at mine all finished up:

We can see a couple of small darker paint patches down low in the middle section, and one at the top as well.  Then the boxcar's blue colour was faded overall with a spray of a beige tone.  I prefer to use that rather than an actual white for paint fading.

I further faded just one door to suggest that maybe the railroad replaced that one for some reason. Also, on all the other doors I very lightly sprayed the top panel with a red primer colour to maybe imply that the original blue was fading away.

The bottom sill is darkened using black Panel Line, which I brushed on, waited a minute or two and then wiped away.  I did the same around the perimeters of all of the doors as well just to highlight the seams. 

And the other side of B&O 493027 is done the same way, but also features a bunch of graffiti along the lower areas. I know not everybody likes or wants to see graffiti, but it's the modern thing now, so I usually put some on one side. These are all decals made by a variety of manufacturers.  I sprayed a few light layers of Roof Brown along the bottom portions to flatten down the graffiti, adding some subtle weathering.

Also, the rust streaking is done with three colours this time.  I used Raw Sienna first, then Burnt Sienna over that, and just a bit of Burnt Umber at the top of the streaking.  The Raw Sienna is a more yellow colour, which shows up better against the blue of the boxcar.

And some views of B&O 493027 from out on the railroad:

To try to show some aging on the roof, I sprayed the whole roof with a red primer colour.  Then sprayed overtop of that with B&O Blue.  Once that had all dried overnight, I sanded the roof panels with 600 grit sandpaper to expose some of that primer.

Off-spot during some switching

This view shows the brake end, which has collected some grime

Second from the end of a parts train.

And a look at the B&O parts car spotted at the plant for the first time.  This one makes a real nice addition to the layout.

And that's about it for now.  Have a good week.  Happy October everybody.

Views From My Week

A few views from my week of sorting through some older photos, watching a lake freighter, doing some weathering, etc., etc.

Routine freight rolling along the GTW

GTW SD38 passing beneath the overpass

Began the weathering on not one, not two, but three boxcars this past week.  Just getting the paint fading done on them all at the same time makes things a little easier or more efficient, not that I'm cranking them out like a factory or anything.  Two of 'em are my own, and the third one belongs to Jamie.  Sometimes it seems just as easy to do more than one at a time.

B&O 86 foot parts car from Tangent.  The dark patches are done by putting masking tape in that spot, and then airbrushing the fade colour over the whole car.  Pull the tape off, and there's a darker paint patch.

SSW 65003 after it's been sprayed with the paint fade layer.  This is an Ahearn blue-box car that I've modified with the external ribs, some roof work, and coupler box replacements.  My friend Sean printed the big Cotton belt letters for me.

And thirdly, I've got this 50 foot Rapido boxcar underway for Jamie.  As you can see, I've got the masking tape on it to create some paint patching the same as I mentioned above.

Here's a photo from earlier in the summer of the lake freighter Lee A. Tregurtha.  This beauty was originally built in 1942 (so now is 84 years old - wow) as a tanker for the Pacific war effort, and later purchased and converted by Cleveland Cliffs shipping into a bulk carrier.  It's been lengthened twice so now it's 826 feet in length, and was also widened and deepened. I certainly don't have any idea how they would do that. But it's still sailing the Great Lakes.

Passing under the Blue Water Bridges heading out into Lake Huron

And I'll close out here with some local (Sarnia) news, VIP Rail had this announcement this week:

https://sarnianewstoday.ca/sarnia/news/2026/09/24/vip-rail-expands-railcar-storage-capacity-serving-sarnia-industry

That's it for now.

Entrance Gate is Installed

Last time here, I had posted about a simple (manually operated) gate that I had put together and weathered for the rail entrance to my Tri-State Paper industry.  Well, I got that installed this week, so here's a few photos from that accomplishment.

It is going to be so much easier to install the gate if I just bring the industry over to the workbench.  Just slide the rail joiners back a bit, and I can then lift the whole thing out of place for maintenance such as this.That's the gap left in the layout when the industry has been lifted out.

And here is the entrance gate installed at the workbench.  Just had to drill a small hole into the MDF base and slip the gate post into that.  The fence to the left of the gate was a bit of a lucky find in my parts bin and happened to fit quite nicely into place.

Not a great picture, I know.  Anyway, the whole industry module is back in place, and the rail joiners have it connected it to the layout.  Not sure how I managed to get make the gate a foot taller than the fencing but it's really not so noticeable from the aisle.

And the gate is swung into the open position.

Gate open, and CN 5931 shoving a GTW boxcar into the industry spur.

The 5931 has got the boxcar into place now.  The new gate worked out just fine ('cept for that height issue), the power is connected to the spur (see, the headlight is on) and it looks like  all's well at Tri-State Paper.

That'll be it for now. Have a good week out there.

Some This and That in September

I had posted last week a picture or two of this engine, but failed to mention what type of engine it is, so...With just a single boxcar in tow,  here is BSTX 5859, a B36-7 locomotive, from Rapido.

Passing beneath the Gratiot Avenue overpass.

And speaking of locomotives, I had this one out of it's box and onto the layout for only the 2nd or 3rd time a week ago.  It was running just fine around the layout at a nice low speed.  Until it wasn't. 

It just stopped.  Right about here.

Pretty sharp looking SD40-2 from Bowser. Not sure what made it stop, but I carried it over to the programming track.

Here's what happened when I tried to re-program it.

Can Not Read Configuration Variable.  It will not respond at all. I think I'm going to have to replace the decoder.  Rats.

On a happier note, I've made up this gate for the rail entrance to my Tri-State Paper industry.  This was a little bit of a kitbash from a Walthers kit.

And after some weathering

The fencing that runs along the rail spur at Tri-State is pretty worn looking, so the gate might as well show pretty much the same appearance.  I haven't got it actually installed yet because the paint, er rust, is still wet.

So that'll be all for now.  Have a nice week.

Replaced a Switch at the JSSX Yard

Had leaser engine BSTX (Brian Smith Transportation) 5859 out on the layout for some work this week, and almost immediately ran into some track trouble.  Kept hitting a spot at the track switch at the JSSX yard entrance where the engine would either: a) stop cold, or b) derail.

So that was annoying.

I've had trouble at that same spot before, and this time was enough that I decided to lift the offending (Atlas) switch out and replace it, this time with one from Peco which I happened to have had on-hand.

Here's an older "file photo" of that leaser engine, although it is in a location at the other end of the yard from where the trouble is/was.I had weathered this engine for Brian (he's the CEO at BSTX), and then ended up buying it from him, breaking my moratorium on buying new engines.

Anyway, here's some boring pictures of that trouble-causing switch (middle of the picture)If you look closely, you can see that there's a small piece of rail, probably an insulated section, missing just to the left of the frog.  I don't know why it's not there, but I kind of think it must have been this way for quite some time.

I soaked the ballast with water and isopropyl alcohol, let it sit for a few minutes, slid the rail joiners back, and was able to lift the switch right out.  Snipped a couple of feeder wires too, and then scraped out the ballast.

There's the Peco replacement switch in place.  I soldered in the feeder wires, and put the ground throw in place.  That's actually moved over about an inch from where it had been.  (I've since filled in the ballast at that other switch at the bottom of the pictures too).

After a few successful test passes with the engine and a few freight cars, I replaced the ballast and applied the glue to hold it all in place.  Maybe paint some ties tomorrow, and add a little bit of ground cover here and there as well.

And I'll close out now with this view of that 5859 waiting for the ballast glue to dry overnight before being cleared to run through the new switch.  The whole process was over and done with in about two hours.  Could have been worse.

Have a real good Labour Day holiday weekend everybody !

Here's How That SP Auto Parts Car Turned Out

Here's a few looks at the way that 86 foot SP auto-parts boxcar from last week's post has turned out:This is kind of a before and after view...the same type of boxcar on the bottom is of course a different number, but this view shows the difference between the boxcar's original clean appearance and my weathered model.  (I've also started weathering the one on the bottom now too, but that'll be for another post).

My finished boxcar, is fully weathered.

And a few from out in the wilds of the layout

SP 615243 is spotted at the parts factory

The car's colour seems to be "off" a little bit in this view.  I don't know why.

This look shows the weathered roof as well.  I really like this view.

And now, not to bore anyone, but I've also now begun the weathering of SP 615222 (below).

Weathered on the left end, still clean on the right.

So that's it for this time.  Have a good week out there.

Just Started Weathering an Auto-Parts Boxcar

I got a start on weathering this boxcar just this week.  Been putting doing so off for ages, as I've been afraid to mess it up.  I actually have modelled 4 of these.  Looking new like this, they just don't look right when mixed in among my weathered 86 footers.The clean car.  Some years ago, I worked hard to add the exterior ribs and get the car painted, but those grey arrows are decals, and were by far the most difficult part.  Getting them to settle down over vertical and horizontal ribs seemingly took forever.

Here's that boxcar (the one on the left) coupled with two of my other exterior rib auto-parts cars out in the wilds of the layout.

Anyway, here's the way the first side looks as I've gotten started on SP 615243.

Faded the overall car with my usual Concrete Gray, and I've added some streaking rust and just a few rust blisters as well.  That's as far as I've gotten. So far.  More to come on this.

I also sold a couple of 86 footers this week. Here's a look at those.

This Conrail car has gone to New Brunswick

SOU 42538 is gone to a new home in Brampton.

And in the 1:1 world, down at C-Yard in Sarnia, a picture of a Nova Corp. plastic pellets hopper with a generous amount of artwork on it.

Can't quite decide if I like this or not, but I would think quite a bit of time and effort must have been spent by somebody.

That's about it for now.  Have a good week.