sunshine coast Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 Not the nickname of a Mid-west shortline... just a description of my weathering ....... Over the last few years there has been a decent amount of MEC and BAR locos and freight stock produced.....of which I have probably collected a bit tooooo much.. ...and now I am getting around to weathering ... I usually find some prototype photos to follow to give a guide on what effect to end up with .. first up a straight forward Athearn gon... warmed and bent a bit over the gas cooker ...careful with this bit ... lettering rubbed down and distressed with a fibreglass pen... the underside and trucks are given a good blasting of Railmatch sleeper grime from a rattle can....the wheel treads and flanges are coated with Maskol to save a lot cleaning after... when spraying the underside I just held a piece of card loosely against the sides and ends so that some overspray would creep up the sides in a variable way ...the inside was sprayed as well..with more care taken on the masking as most crud is thrown up not down ... some extra work done with some acrylics and then burnt umber and burnt sienna oils for the rustier areas... now ready to go ....a Quick and Dirty..... this will do for the time being ...I will at some stage probably return to this and add more detail to the weathering and a fit a load or just some detritus in the bottom of the gon ...a gradual process of working through the stock bringing up the level of detail by stages instead of spending a long time on one item when it then stands out amongst the rest .. I shall post a few more different ones later .... Regards Trevor ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Holmes Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 Looks great! I need a technique like this. Thanks for sharing it. Ian Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gridwatcher Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 Nicely done Trevor! They are almost all 'bent'! and rusty.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted December 30, 2011 Share Posted December 30, 2011 Nice work on that gon, I especially like the way you have faded and weathered the lettering, and I like the texture of the rust effects. I think that is the old Roundhouse gondola. The paint scheme shown was applied to some MEC gons, but not that batch. There was a batch of 50' gons (1100-1174) delivered in the 70s that had the green scheme with the round pine tree herald, but the model you have most closely resembles the two batches of general service gons built by Bethlehem Steel in the late 30s (3200-3299 built in 1937 and 3300-3449 built in 1939). These had drop bottoms and fairly prominent control rods on the sides. By 1977 there were very few of them left: ten of the second batch and four of the first that had been modified with 16" wooden extensions that were used for carrying scrap leather to a rendering plant (possibly Maine Reduction at Forbes on the Belfast and Moosehead Lake). Other cars were fitted with peaked ends with a cable between them so that copper ore could be protected from the weather. I don't have any pictures of the GS gons, but there is one of a modified car in this article http://www.trainlife...er-1989-page-10 on page 13. The car you have is numbered for a batch of gons 17000-17149 built by Bethlehem Steel in 1939. They were low-sided gons with wood floors and had extremely interesting careers being converted to pulpwood racks, modified for limerock traffic, moving into MOW service and, in a few cases, still in revenue service as gons into the 70s (17 still shown in the 1977 ORER). The article referenced above includes notes and pictures of these cars. A good model was released by Ertl and can still be found occasionally on eBay, as can a resin kit by Funaro and Camerlengo, who also do a kit for the GS gon. Hope these notes are of interest, not intended to nit-pick your work. Good to see a fellow MEC modeller back in action! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted December 30, 2011 Author Share Posted December 30, 2011 Thanks for the comments chaps .... Highpeak ...thank you for the info ..it is, as always ,very appreciated and I know you are not nit-picking ...thanks for the article link...very interesting ..doing a few conversions is on the list of never ending "to do"... I must admit to not being worried about a freight car being 100% accurate,but I do try to get them as near as possible but sometimes,as in the case of these gondolas they are way out ! ( I have 3...different numbers same colour scheme) they do look ok with a bit of work ...the inside is just a plain flat surface,no detail at all,so a blast of paint and a bit of weathering take the eye off of the faults.....boxcars are another minefield ...so you will have to excuse the goofs as I go along ...but I do like to find out more info so please keep commenting ...I am trying to build a small railroad empire and 2 different lots of cancers within 10 years has made me realise that there is not all the time in the world to get things spot on ! ... I am presently dusting off the railroad and getting things sorted again so,fingers crossed,will carry on posting some more work that I do . Regards Trevor ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 MEC was very resourceful when it came to kitbashing freight cars to serve relatively low-revenue traffic. The clothes pin cars are a good example of that. Part 2 of that article http://www.trainlife...tober-1989-pg31 shows you what they got up to with boxcars. The ones that catch my eye are the pulpwood cars and the comments in the article about how that traffic changed during the couple of decades after WW2. The pre-war cars were somewhat disreputable and look like modifications of stock cars. When the issues with loading photographs have been resolved, I'll add a couple of old photos that were given to me about 30 years ago. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 Just noticed I forgot to post the "before" photos of the gon ... and these will be the next type of candidates for a battering !! Regards Trevor .... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 Looks like the image posting issue is resolved. Here's an example of a MEC 40' car in the 70s. They got dirty but we not too disreputable as a lot of them had been through some degree of refurbishment in the late 60s to get more life out of them. At that stage graffiti was not really in evidence. Not a lot of damage to the cars since the most typical lading was paper and it had to be secured to avoid costly damage. Additional lettering details you could add for your time period are the ACI label (the barcode-like thing to the left of the door), the consolidated stencil at the right hand end of the car, and the wheel inspection symbol. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 This is the old photo of the pulpwood car I referred to earlier. This would be a bit of a challenge to model if you were to have any structural integrity in the car while keeping to any sort of scale thickness of the timbers. The door fastening arrangement is pretty crude. My notes indicate the photo was taken in 1936 in Bath, ME. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Sheep Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 with the last car, could the load not be structural to help the sides structure to remain intact while building / once built? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 You could use the load to strengthen the car though then you end up with the "gee, they sent the pulpwood back" problem. Not all the racks were that ramshackle though, and I don't think that particular series survived the war. Apologies for a minor thread diversion, but the couple of racks in this shot are a bit more suitable for kitbashing. I am looking at the CV stock car kit as a start point for something like the far car in the picture. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted January 2, 2012 Author Share Posted January 2, 2012 The 40' box cars will not be too extreme at all ..as you say they were reasonably well looked after..so it will be general dirt and some door scrapes mostly ... Re. the pulpwood cars .... The MEC 7737 car looks like it has 4 tie beams across the top on the middle 4 external verticals .....that is what the pulp logs that are poking out the top are resting on .... you can just see the same on the second vertical in from the RH end on the 2nd photo ... the 2ft cars on the Sandy River had metal tie rods from side to side.......so if you build it right in model form ...they are all a ###### to have removable loads .. Such is life ... Regards Trevor ... PS ....I don't mind if my threads wander a bit ...it all adds to the knowledge pool ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
highpeak Posted January 2, 2012 Share Posted January 2, 2012 I just set my scanner up again (been doing a bit of work on the house and a lot of stuff was stored away) and scanned in this grab shot of a somewhat dirtier car. I think the main reason for taking it was the new door the car had acquired with a bracket presumably to help open/close it with the aid of a forklift truck. The only snag with this sort of thing (filthy car/new door) is that the car tends to stick in your memory (oh look, it's that car again...). But like all the layout cliches, this did happen occasionally. I have no idea what all that mess on the far end of the car is, looks like somebody threw something at the train. Not a typical weathering effect. Note the sign on the car alerting employees to the lack of running boards even though the car retains a high-mounted brake wheel (bottom right hand corner.) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted January 3, 2012 Author Share Posted January 3, 2012 Box car gets the undersides sprayed with "sleeper grime" then a going over the roof and body with burnt umber oil paint to give a base coat ...this will be followed by a bit more detail work with burnt sienna and some chalks when the oil paint has dried a bit .... more to follow... Regards Trevor ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 a quick burst with some artists chalks...scraped off with a knife to give a nice dust.... then applied onto the still tacky oil paints...gives more colour and texture.....you can spend hours playing around with the oil paints and chalks....and if it all goes wrong for you ...just wash it all off with some turps... if you are satisfied then it can be left to dry off more for a few days and then sealed with matt varnish... and another gondola with a bit more dented side..... Regards Trevor ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_long Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Hi Trevor What style brushes did you use to cover the roof and body with the burnt umber? Plus what was the consistency? Thanks Dave Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave1905 Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 This is the old photo of the pulpwood car I referred to earlier. This would be a bit of a challenge to model if you were to have any structural integrity in the car while keeping to any sort of scale thickness of the timbers. The door fastening arrangement is pretty crude. My notes indicate the photo was taken in 1936 in Bath, ME. Note the Fox trucks. This definitely would not be an interchange car. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine coast Posted January 5, 2012 Author Share Posted January 5, 2012 Hi Trevor What style brushes did you use to cover the roof and body with the burnt umber? Plus what was the consistency? Thanks Dave Dave, the brush I used is a bit like me at the moment...old and knackered.... the small one is used to brush on and brush out the oil paints,burnt umber,raw umber and burnt sienna are the ones I use most of the time, just as it comes out the tube ....if it is thinned it is hard to control ...ideal for washes but not for this kind of work ... I tend to dab some centrally to the area that is being worked on ...then spread it out from there ....making sure the brush is moving in the same direction to suit the effect ...for the roof...paint initially on the centreline and brushed out side to side....all 3 colours can be used ..depending on the look required... this shows another type of finish...using all 3 paints...in layers..thicker layers of paint can be stippled to give a surface texture which can be very effective .. the larger soft brush....make up brushes are very good for this ...is used to feather out the paints ....just lightly working over the paint ..it fades and smoothes the paint into the original finish of the freight car....making it less looking like it was painted on ... using oils you can go back over the work many times....also if you feel too much is on or it does not look right ..wipe off with a rag ..and restart ... this was one attempt.... too much paint all over... after wiping back ... this was the basis for the finished one shown earlier.. Hope this has helped ...any questions just ask... best bet ...have a go ...that is what I did...nothing can go wrong .. Regards Trevor ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_long Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Thanks Trevor, very helpful! I'll be getting a few more tubes of oils tomorrow so I'll give it a go thanks! Regards Dave Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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