Weathering American HO scale freight cars

[YankeeRailroader]

After a recent visit to the USA (North Carolina) last month (October) I realised that all these shiney colourful and clean box cars made by Athearn, Intermountain and so forth simply aren't the norm!

So I decided to look up some freight cars sites and use some of my own photos from my trip. These useful sites are:

1. Railfan Freight Car Photographs

2. Fallen Flags

3.RR Picture Archives

It took me a while trawling through these hundreds and hundreds of photos but its worth it to create a convincing 'ruster'. I had an Athearn PS5344 box car in D&H that was crying out to be weathered. The first two photos show the original car that my model was based on. AGR180 was at Charlotte, NC. AGR is the Alabama Gulf Railroad and has a lot of these old D&H cars. My model is based on this and is numbered AGR187 and has graffiti by Microscale. The original D&H reporting marks and logo were 'patched out' using an airbrush. The patching colours rarely match the original car colour. I restenciled the car using a Microscale set. I added the grime by painting a wash of Tamya acrylics (brown, yellow and red). Its worth washing the car in warm soapy water first (and drying it with a hair dryer) before painting. I brush painted the end walkovers and Kadee 158 couplers with a brown colour. Remember a project is never finished so I may add some 'rust' here and there.

[squeaky]

There are some very useful pics on that site, thanks

[Glorious NSE]

Nice - can I also reccomend:

http://www.railcarphotos.com/

[sunshine coast]

These sites are also very useful for dating and detail purposes....eg..web link ..BAR in 1972 roofwalks still in place...and web link MEC in 1979 roofwalk removed but ladders and grab rails still in place ...

 

Regards Trevor ..