Hello all
I am thinking about painting my very first N scale boxcar. I have one stripped and ready to paint, but I was wondering something…
It seems like boxcar models come with either body color or silver roof panels. Are there any rules in the 1:1 world regarding metal roofs and paint? I am no expert on real boxcars, so please bear with me on this one!
JD
JD,
There really are no ‘rules’. Some boxcars have gavanized roof panels and paint does not ‘stick’ very well when the galvanizing is new. Usually one will see a little paint misted over the edge of the roof. If the customer wants the roof painted, then it will be done. After a few years the galanizing tends to wear and paint or ‘car cement’ may be applied if there has been a rainwater leakage problem with the car,
Jim
I was wondering about that, how well paint sticks to the galvy roofs.
The April 2012 Model Railroader had, as part of it’s “How to weather your trains” cover / theme, had an article by Charlie Duckworth called “Weathering cars for individuality” that had a lot of good examples and information on weathering boxcars. Many steam-era cars used galvinized steel roofs, sometimes these were left in a silvery gray, sometimes they were painted over, and sometimes they were covered with black “car cement”. I’m not sure if the more modern boxcars are galvinized steel or something else. If there is a pattern, it’s hard to work out. Some cars seem to have the silver roofs, while some similar cars don’t.
I used to spend a lot of time downtown, where the parkign garage is right next to the tracks. The tracks through town are not used very often, since it blocks a lot of streets, but occasionally they route trains through there. Once in a while I would get ucky and one would be comign when I was either getting out of or going to my car, and being a few floors up and lookign down gave a very unique perspective. As an answer to the question, well, some cars clearly were painted, and had rusted areas and chipped paint, and others clearly were NEVER painted, there was just a fuzz of overspray along the sides with just plain galvanized metal showing on the majority of the roof - also sometimes with rusting areas. This being within the past 10 years, so if you’re doign ‘modern’ I would have to say there is no absolute answer - some are painted and some aren’t. If I had to guess, I’d say the trend it towards not, to save money.
–Randy
Try a site like http://www.railcarphotos.com/index.php and look at photos that show car roofs. There’s variation in weathering and paint by era, so you can determine what’s appropriate for what you want to model. Roads can make different decisions about painting roofs from one batch of cars to another, and the same class of car may get painted roofs when new, but not when repainted later, or vice versa. A roof that was initially painted may show evidence of paint only along the ribs separating panels, and this leftover weathered paint may be left in place when the sides and ends are repainted later. Modeling the variation will increase the realism of your fleet.
Thanks folks! Since this is my first car, and will only be a MOW item to use track dusters with, I think I will go with the silver roof. The overspray is something I’d try, but I don’t have an airbrush, so…
If you’re doing modern stuff:
from my bird’s eye perch looking down on the nearby tracks, I’ve noticed that there does seem to be a bit of a correlation between painted and unpainted and the type of boxcar. It really seems like anything with a flat roof is unpainted and anything with a peak of any sort is painted. This also seems to follow with high cube cars, which are all flat roofed.
Have always wondered why some model boxcars will be painted with a black or silver roof but this explains it.
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As a side note, I did go with silver for the roof. Thing is, my custom decal didn’t work out, so the project is on hold. But the answers on this thread should be useful to others, too! 