Train Board April weathering challenge

Been working on weathering a few more cars this month and also trying out some techniques with acrylic washes that I had not tried before.  This months trainboard.com weathering challenge was to complete 3 to 4 box cars for a short line.  These could be of any era or type of box car.  The natural place to start is to look through one's collection for at least one short line car.  All cars needed to be either Micro-Trains cars or at least have wheels or couplers from Micro-Trains.

The only one I had was this Atlanta & St. Andrews (ASAB) Bay 50 ft exterior post box car that I bought at the NSE convention last summer.



Next I started looking for prototype images on the Internet of ASAB box cars.  This particular railroad was a good choice as there were quite a few both in the scheme showed above and also box cars purchased from other railroad and patched.  I enjoyed learning a bit about a railroad that I did not know anything about before.

Here is the prototype reference photo I used for this car.  I choose this one because it had a replacement door which made it unique.





And this is how the weathered model came out.  I ordered the replacement 10 ft Superior door from Micro-Trains, they come in a 12 pack so I think I now may have a lifetime supply of those.

The ASAB had acquired quite a few cars from the Wabash Valley RR and Micro-Trains had recently issued a model of one of those types of cars so I picked one up at my local hobby shop to be the 2nd car.


Here's the finished model of the 2nd car.  Patched and re-numbered to match the prototype.  All the cars in this project got BLMA metal wheel sets with the wheel sides painted rail brown.  This car got one axle set painted oxide red to simulate a recent replacement.

Don't know if this car had also been from Wabash Valley RR so I used a Micro-Trains model of a Cadiz RR 50 ft box car that I picked up on ebay as my starting point on this one.



Here's the finished model of ASAB 7401.  After patching and re-numbering as needed all of these cars received acrylic washes, dull-coat, and weathering powders.

The 4th prototype I chose was ASAB 7443 which seemed in better shape than the others.  I happened to have a Micro-Trains 25000 series Conrail box car that I used for this one.


Everything done the same way on this model just a bit lighter.  Also added Microscale reflector decals to match the prototype photo.

The roofs of each car were painted all silver or silver just along the lower edges as if the original paint was peeling and the galvanized steel or aluminum of the roof showing through.  Then acrylic washes and weathering chalks.

These weathering challenges have been fun but I have not been doing so much on the layout so unless the one for May is particularly interesting this will be the last one for me for now anyway.