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Sunday, February 2, 2014

Grime & Dirt VI and a lot of rust too

I was looking through some of my books on the Lehigh Valley RR and noticed how decrepit the company's hoppers were by the 1970's. The Lehigh Valley didn't buy modern 70+ ton hoppers because its coal shipping business had been dying since the 1950's and all they had left was a few old 2-bay hoppers. I have had this Athearn blue box hopper for a few years and the only weathering I had done was to beat up the top of the body. I decided to put a real harsh weathering job on this one with lots of rust. I decided not to replace the grabirons or stirrups with wire. This is kind of an experiment to see if a thorough weathering can make chunky details less noticeable. Here is the result, you be the judge.


I used some super fine polishing paper to remove some of the lettering from the car.


The rust is Acrylic paint. The first color I used was Raw Siena which is a very dark brownish yellow. You can see this color at the very edge if the rusty areas. The second color was Burnt Siena for that redish rust. The transition from Raw to Burnt Siena is easy to see in the upper left quadrant above the slope sheet in the first image. The last color is  Burnt Umber which is  a very dark brown. I like Burnt Umber for old pitted rust. All these colors blend together for what I think is a convincing rusty appearance.


For the couplers I apply the colors in reverse order, By using the Raw Siena last I can use it to highlight the edges and detail in the coupler and also create a dusty/rusty look.