Weathering a couple of Conrail covered hoppers

In the operating scheme of the layout, Diamond Plastics in Battle Mountain receives car loads of plastic pellets from the east coast.  I found that I had a shortage of eastern railroad's covered hoppers in the correct era.  I did have a pair of Delaware Valley cylindrical covered hoppers in Eire Lackawanna that I felt were too old to fit in my 1975 to 1995 layout era.  Then realizing that the Eire Lackawanna was adsorbed into Conrail in 1976, I started to do a little research on these cars and found photos of these type of cars being in service with Conrail at least into the late 1990's.  In this photo below, an old PRR keystone logo can be seen showing through just to the left of the Conrail logo.

So, the Conrail era of 1976 to 1999 fits right in with my layout and they inherited many of this type of freight car from their predecessor roads including the Erie Lackawanna.  Seems the Pennsylvania and Eire Lackawanna cars were this mineral red color but some later were painted light gray by Conrail. The road numbers assigned to these cars by Conrail seemed to range from about 884500 to 884950.  For these cars I want to model them before any re-painting had been and just patched with the new Conrail road number. 

The first step I took in weathering these cars was to fade the "Erie Lackawanna" road name in varying degrees.  I used a soft eraser pencil dipped in Microscale Micro Sol and rubbed off the lettering part of the way.  Photo below shows before and after.

The next step was to use black stripe decals to black out the existing Eire Lackawanna road number.  I did this with some black decal stripe.  When this had set, I then brushed some gloss finish over it to make it extra secure when working with the road number decals that will go on top of it. 

 I could not find any photo of a car known to have been a former Eire Lackawanna car so the road numbers chosen were from within the range of similar Conrail cars that I had seen in photos.  The lettering for the road numbers was taken from a Microscale white numbers and letters set.  I also added a data panel from another Microscale set.

Next, I used black detail wash to weather the car bodies.  Once I was satisfied with the wash effects, the car bodies were let dry over night and I took a look at the trucks that I had pulled off of them.  They were Micro-Trains older era types with pizza cutter flanges so I pulled out 2 pairs of roller bearing types from my stash as these would be more prototypical for the layout's era.  The wheels on these had low profile flanges which I prefer for use on my code 55 track.

The wheels were removed from the trucks and the trucks were places into a holder that had made a few years ago for specifically for spraying Micro-Trains trucks.  After first spraying a adhesion promoting primer, I sprayed the truck side frames with Mission Models railroad tie brown.  After that had dried, I sprayed both the trucks and the car bodies with Testors Dulcoate lacquer.   

After installing the new trucks, both cars were given a test run around the layout and preformed perfectly.  So, two freight cars that had been sitting in the "to be sold" box and now active on the layout and are among my favorites. The two photos below show 884534 on the siding at Diamond Plastics and an empty 884590 in the yard at Carlin waiting for the next eastbound manifest to pick it up. 

Patching a patch job

During the N Scale convention held in Reno in June, Scaletrains sent out their PS-2 4785 3 bay covered hopper painted for Golden West Service and patched for Cotton Belt (SSW) to everyone who attended the manufacturers breakfast on Sunday morning.  What a nice surprise that was.  Because my wife also attended, we received two of these models with the same number so I wanted to re-number one of them.

I always like to start with a prototype photo and so looked through a bunch online.  The patches on these cars were done in several different ways.  I settled on this one although it is less weathered than the model.  While the stock Scaletrains model has a dark blue background with yellow characters, this one appears to have a black background with white characters.

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First thing to do was to remove the original patch.  I found that with a soaking of Microscale Micro Sol and gentle scraping with an Xacto blade, the original patch comes off fairly easily.

For the black background I used some of the wider stripes from a black stripe set I had.  None of the stripes were wide enough so I doubled the rows to get the width I needed.

This is the area with the black stripes applied.  The black stripe decals were applied in between bunt not over the panel seam to match the prototype photo.  These were then given an application of Micro Sol before the characters were started. 

This is how the model looked after the characters were applied.  As the weathering on these cars was identical, I added just a bit more to this one to make them seem different.  This was a fun project.  Most prototype patch jobs tend to be held to lower standards then original paint jobs so a few crooked decals or mismatched character fonts can be forgiven.  These are great models and I'm really happy to have them on my layout.

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.

March weathering madness

This month TrainBoard.com has been having another weathering contest.  I had sat out the February contest but this month I am in.   Between doing some DCC decoder installations and working on my contest entry I have not done much with the layout this month.

The theme for this months weathering contest is runner packs which was defined as any group of 3 to 4 cars, they don't necessarily have to be the same type.

My entry is going to be this 3 car set of Trainworx 46 ft general service drop bottom gondolas.  I heated and dented the side panels prior to the other standard weathering processes.


This months contest is particularly interesting because everyone seems to be entering different types of cars.  Here is a direct link to the thread for this weathering contest, it's worth a look.

Train Board January weathering contest

It's 2016 already !, well happy new year !

In December my entry in the N scale weathering contest that was held on TrainBoard.com won by membership vote.  I got my prize in the mail yesterday.  It's this Great Northern weathered box car.

The requirement last month was any 40 ft box car that had at least some Micro-Trains part on it.  I entered this Micro-Trains car that I had weathered.  Another view of it is on this December post.

They are doing it again in January and this month it's got to include graffiti and can be any type of car, as long as it has at least some Micro-Trains product on it.  My entry is going to be this Atlas 50 ft ACF Centerflow covered hopper car.

Here is a view of the other side.  Voting is going to be during the 3rd week of January on the N Scale board at TrainBoard.com.  Any TrainBoard member can vote.

Check it out.

The weathering contest

Work on the layout has been slowly progressing and I'll be posting more on that soon hopefully.  One side project I have undertaken during December is weathering a couple of my Micro-Trains 40 ft box cars for entry in a Micro-Trains sponsored contest on Trainboard.com.

This is the one I entered.  If you are a member of Trainboard.com all of the entries can be seen and voted on at:

www.trainboard.com 




If your are not a member, it's worth looking into.  There is no cost and they have quite a few separate boards for each modeling scale plus rail-fanning and other railroad related topics.  This months weathering contest is going to be the first of several with each month being a different type of car.

This is another car that I weathered at the same time but did not enter.  These photos were taken on one of my Ntrak modules.

Hopefully before too long both of these will be running through the Palisade Canyon.

Happy Holidays to all !