Grime & Dirt V

It has been an unusually cold winter for North Carolina. We usually get a a few weekends with temps in the upper 50's and even the low 60's but those days have been coming on week days and it cools off by the time I get home. The last two weeks have been so cold I can't even do any spray painting of sealing outside, which slow down even the weathering of rolling stock. As a result, any projects requiring the use of solvents are stopped cold (pun intended) and the weathering of freight cars has slowed greatly. I think if I change my weathering process a little and do some parts in larger batches (like Dullcoating and priming) then I'll have an inventory of cars waiting for drybrushing and or powders, both of  which I can do indoors.

The latest addition to the re-weathered fleet is this Western Maryland (Chessie System) covered hopper. This one was modestly weathered previously. I was able to remove most of the old weathering because I had used acrylic paint. I switched to acrylics for weathering about 15 years ago and I wish I had switched 20 years earlier. I can strip off acrylic based weathering with a Q-tip dipped in Isopropyl alcohol. The model is a stock Atlas RTR.

This Lehigh & New England is also a re-weather project. I removed most of the old weathering but not all of it would come off. In the end I think the remaining old weathering worked in my favor by adding some texture that I wouldn't and probably couldn't have added intentionally.

I have not added wire grab or stirrups and it's obvious in these images. The car also has a list which you can see in the above image. This is an old Roundhouse kit I built at least 25 years ago and I didn't mount the body to the frame properly. I can't correct the list without the risk of major damage to the body so I'll just leave it as is. If you were to see this car go by in a train you would likely notice it because of the weathering but not see the list and probably not the chunky details.

I picked up this car for $5 and it came with a 40' trailer too. What I really wanted was a flat car to use for drilling my carfloat and  got a trailer for free. I added plenty of weight to the underside before weathering. 

As nice as the wood deck is I would say this car has been re-decked within about 3 years or so. The Pennsy shops didn't bother with repainting though.