Weathering is one of the coolest subjects of model building. Rail cars and really spend the gamut between factory fresh, dusty, and leaving person wondering when they’re just going to disintegrate.
If any of you have interesting photos of weathering, please consider posting them here.
I’ll start out with this covered hopper. Covered hoppers have a distinct weather and pattern that I don’t see is frequently on other freight cars. I had the chance to pull off and take a photo of this one. See where when painting, whether it be by a machine or a human, is sweeping motion of applying the paint, although I also wonder if that because the sides of the hopper are convex? I guess is that the painted primer does not go on uniform thicknesses. I saw another one that looked like it had been badly painted with a giant broom with stiff up and down strokes.
Those covered hoppers always seem to rust on the upper surfaces! I suspect it’s at least in part due to rainfall hitting the top and then dripping off as soon as the sides curve under, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s also some kind of wind vortex effect that abrades the tops. And of course any spillage during loading acts as gentle shot-blasting! (Not to mention the effects of different types of load - cement hoppers probably get it worse…)
Still, it’s a great excuse for some simple vertical dry-brushing!
I will assume spray painting, messing around with brushes takes too much time, gives
inconsistent results, uses a little bit more paint (costs do add up) and is generally messy and costly.
Welded on brackets/supports, the spray painter (machine or human) paints the area around the bracket and then paints the bracket (or vice versa). When the bracket is sprayed there will be overspray around the base when the spray is aimed at the welds.
The paint layer around the bracket will be slightly thicker and whatever abrades it (see barkingdiggers ost above) needs a little bit more time to wear through the extra paint thickness.
Spray gun has been moved in an up-down pattern when the wagon was painted leaving
a few extra microns of paint in the centre of the pattern (not enough overlap or maybe too much overlap between the swathes of paint)
Could those lines be welds causing a non-smooth surface which then received (intentionally or not) some extra paint?
Frenchie, thanks a lot for these pictures. Top one of your second post, that would be a lot of fun to recreate. A lot of these things have weathering that would be fun to recreate. First post, bottom, that’s quite a lot of color in that tank car train.
Frenchie, like a Southern fried potluck, a smorgasbord of greasy, grimey, delicacies to feat our eyes upon. Thanks!
Those EU tank cars with the colorful ends and the thick gunk cascading from the fill valves make quite a sight. So does that brightly rusted black tank car next to the silver “clean” tanker. The dichotomy of “factory fresh” and heavily weathered side by side fascinates me.
not to interrupt this rustfest too much (I’m lovin’ it personally) but for you guys that do HO scale modeling - how do you model a bunch of the same type of car with different serial numbers? if you buy a bunch of hopper cars, for example, do the models come with different serial numbers (not even sure that is the right term), or do you buy after market decals and paint over them, or what?
Not serial #s, just car #s. In today’s world some manufacturers produce the same car w/different #s. Others do not and you modify them in a variety of ways. Remove the old # or a portion of it and re# w/decals or dry transfers. Some manufacturers sell painted but unnumbered cars that you number yourself or non-decorated cars and kits as well.
thanks. How do you find out if the cars come with different car #s? I really need not get into HO trains, but I’m looking at hopper cars and wondering if I could make a train with a bunch of grain hoppers. I’m looking at the Bachmann website but don’t know what to look for about car numbers.
I bet there is another website where people go all deep on that…
There are products out there designed to loosen the paint so that you can rub it off, then reapply new Road numbers. Usually, the printing is applied over the base color. While back there were same decal manufacturer who made decals in standard for car colors, and you could just clip off a section of decal and cover up the numbers you did not want, then put new decals over that. That’s nice in theory but since model companies tend to create or source their own paint, it can be tricky to match them with the decal. However, in modern cars, especially free cars of railroads that have gone through mergers, it is not unusual to see locomotives and rolling stock obviously repainted only with the background color to blot out the offending markings, with fresh letters applied over it. I’m not sure I have the term right but these are derisively called “patch jobs”.
If you go to Micro Mark or some of the other model tool makers (maybe even Micro Scale), you may find some of those solutions. I’ve been told that using Walther’s SolvaSet will soften up the paint, too. Additionally, I’ve heard people use erasers from pens and pencils. The idea you just simply rub off the numbers and don’t rub hard enough to hurt the base coat.
Years ago I bought a product from eBay that smelled like Goop or that orange pumice product used clean grease off of your hands. It was sold as a way to remove numbers from your trains.
On a couple of the model layouts that I operate on, I noticed where the modelers have removed car numbers. I’ll see if I can get them to tell me how they do it.
