SOO Line Boxcars

I've done some weathering work on a pair of Soo Line boxcars over the past couple of weeks.  At the same time, I had been running two of my own Soo cars on the layout, so I thought I'd share all that on here.

These first two cars are weathered for Jamie, and should match nicely with two others that I worked on for him a just few months back:Got the two of them posed on the street trackage.

View of SOO 16512 from across the street.

SOO 17848.  The old stickers to the left of the door are small bits of white decal film.

The sealant on the roof seams and above the doors is grey craft paint.  I've found that white paint is too stark looking against a rusty roof, so I use grey.  To try to keep the sealant lines straight, I put masking tape on both sides of the each seam and then brushed the paint on. It only took a few minutes and the results look pretty good. Better than if I had painted them free-hand.

I mentioned above that my Soo Line boxcars were also out on the layout, so here's a couple of fresh looks at them too.  These are the Fox Valley "7 Post" models that I've had for quite a few years and have shown on the blog before as well.  I could be wrong (often am) but I think that SOO Line built the prototype cars themselves at their shops somewhere in Wisconsin.

Being shoved on the lead into the Tri-State Paper spur by leaser BSTX 5859.

SOO 19184 spotted at Tri-State. The building is wall panels from the Walthers Bakery kit.

I've just now noticed that little green stripe at the ladder on SOO 19227.  Just looking at it in the picture, I think it might be a little piece of green masking tape that I've somehow overlooked taking off.  Must have been on there for years now.  Maybe I'll just leave it there.

And just one more look at these two for now:

These white and red SOO cars are eye-catching when coupled together

Everybody have a good week out there.

That Waterloo (WLO patch) Boxcar Finished Up

I did get the 50 foot Waterloo boxcar finished up since last week, so here are a few looks at that in a couple of different locations out on the layout.

Also though, friend Chuck identified the model brand for us in the comments section in last week's post, so here's what he wrote about that:

That Maryland and Pennsylvania car is a 50' Berwick boxcar originally made by Branchline Trains. Much later Atlas acquired the brand. Keep up the good work!

Spotted sitting behind a chain link fence, I think one would hardly even notice such a non-descript boxcar if driving past in a car.

A distant view from the end of a rail spur

A look at the graffiti side as the boxcar sits out on the main line just beyond the scrap yard fence

Same location, different angle.

Couldn't resist taking one more look at that side

A look at the roof.  Looks like a lot of time might have passed since the roof was it's original shiny galvanized metal.  Some grey paint, then some roof brown, followed by rust powders to get this appearance.  I also brushed on a light grey for the look of sealant between the roof panels.

I was messing around a bit on my laptop with that AI that we keep hearing about on the news every day. This is the picture I started with.I quite like this picture the way it is, but I told the Microsoft "Co-Pilot" to add a rainstorm.  That's all I told it to do...a nice simple command.

And here's the result of just doing that.  Looks like quite a downpour, and I'm glad I'm not working outside in that.  But I do like the image.

Finally this week, and I had intended to post these two from Brian Smith last week and didn't, so here they are now.  Just down the road a short drive from Brian's home, these were taken in Caron Brook, New Brunswick:

This is CN 3204, an ET44AC built by GE.

2871 coming up the hill.  The trees look like flames.  Thanks Brian.

Have a good week out there everybody.

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.