Some of you mentioned my weathered freight cars that appeared in my layout photos so I decided to take some pictures of a few of them. The techniques vary from pastels to washes to airbrushing depending on the situation. One thing you will notice is that so far I have refrained from adding graffiti to any of them.
They look good… I try weather like you do, more of the dirty and used look… not the rusting beat to death look. Keep up the good work.
Then they can never be authentic. Actually I haven’t placed any graffiti on my cars either. If I do, it will only be a few. Even though its more authentic, too much graffiti doesn’t look that good IMHO.
Check out the January 2010 issue of Model Railroader on page 96. They have a nice little article on Ron Pastucha’s graffitied cottenbelt hopper car. He did a nice job. He normally is an artist for Hollywood Movie sets.
Since it appears that Bdewoody is modeling the 70s/80s timeframe the worst he’d have to do for adding graffiti is greasepencil and chalkmarks from carknockers and the like. Modern graffiti as seen on today’s railcars didn’t start showing up until the 90s. Lack of graffiti is one of the main reasons why I switched eras back to the 70s for my modeling focus.
Great work Bdewoody- I’m liking what I see!
I keep telling myself I’ll start weathering tomorrow, but it keeps moving on me.
Good job on those cars.
That is some of the best weathering I have seen!! We have some modelers who are very good at weathering but to me these look to have the best overall level of grime and rust. I guess it’s all just personal preference but not all cars need to be rust buckets. Could you give us any hints on your method of weathering?
Thanks!
Jim
One thing is to go do some train watching and take pictures. Go onto sites like Fallen Flags and look at the photos of rolling stock. I don’t use the specialty weathering pastels just a box of pastel sticks I’ve had for years from my artists days. I usually just use the dust in the bottom of the box that is a mix of browns, grays greens and orange. I use a wide stiff paint brush and stroke down from top to bottom for rust streaks and up from the bottom for mud and dirt. When airbrushing I use highly thinned enamels at a fairly high pressure setting on my compressor. I haven’t used oils but I have seen some highly effective roof weathering using them.
The main thing is just to get a lot of practice. Try what works for you on cheap old blue box or other cheap rolling stock. Eventually you will be confident enough to do it to expensive Genesis stuff. I’ll even weather a $300 locomotive because otherwise it looks too toylike to me.
Somebody mentioned I need to weather the trucks and wheels more on my models and on some I have. But you need to be careful not to affect the rolling performance or to transfer grime to the rails.
Nice Weathering job, They all look Great!!
You must have had to bring out the wreck crane to get FEC #5035 back on the rails judging by Your first and second pic.[:-^]
I really like the Southern Box in the 1st picture…Tim
Looks great
Not overdone
I was hoping no one would notice that. I sometimes get clumsy. Thanks all for the replies. I try to base my weathering on actual photos of similar rolling stock. And like one person mentioned as I am keeping the time period from around 1975-85 there won’t be much graffiti on any of them.
A big thumbs up on the Seaboard System hopper [C):-)][tup] Looks so much like the ones I remember seeing scattered around Florida.
I second the comments on the graffitti, which is one of the reasones why I don’t plan on modeling the modern era. My cutoff year is 1978.
Just have to say that the cars look great, (tipped over or not). Thumbs up to a great job.
Here’s a covered hopper I just finished working on. Something I haven’t related before is that before starting to add pastels I find it is a good idea to put on a heavy coating of dullcote or some other flat finish. This gives the pastel something to adhere to better than gloss paint or bare plastic.
