Grime & Dirt II

I actually have a couple of  before/after images to share. I saw this Fox Valley SOO boxcar at the National Train Show for a very nice price along with four other highly detailed cars. I roll my eyes when I see HO scale freight cars with $35-$45 price tags. Yes they have fantastic detail, but if you actually use them as intended, how well does that detail withstand regular use? Another thing I think many people don't realize is that all that super detail disappears when the car is viewed in a moving train. I personally intend to use these new cars (with fantastic detail) in photos, more than in operations. The camera sees all, and chunky detail is very obvious when viewed in photos. A prime example is in the previous post. The handrails of that Erie Lackawanna RS-3 look way out of scale because they are. They just don't look so bad when viewed in person. And since the loco is not a museum piece but a working loco that will be run regularly, I don't mind the handrails as long as they don't break.

At this point I have already broken 1 stirrup step while getting the shell screwed to the frame and adding extra weight. I'm not going to go into detail on how I weathered these cars. There are great tutorials in the "Rustbucket Forum" and recently INRAIL's blog in Railroad Model Hobbyist so I wont boor you with my fumbling descriptions.

This is only the second freight car that I applied a fade too. I tried to keep it very light because the car would only be a couple of years old.

The rust fairly light too. I kept it to a few areas that would see wear.

I'm thinking the coupler has to much bright rust color, but then it might look this way if it sat a couple of weeks unused.

I don't have a "clean" image of this car, because I was so stoked with acquiring these new cars that I dove right into weathering when I got home.

I kept the weathering light on this one too for the same reasons as for the Soo car. Just a little rust and some dirt. 

Again, no clean image. This is the first car I applied a fade to, it's ok for my first try. This car was a bitch to get disassembled for adding weight and it sustained damage which can be seen up close.