I was looking at weathering the trucks on some freight cars and locomotives. I realized i have one reciepe as it were . That would make them all the same. Instead of the various weathering process that affect the prototypes. I have looked around and found out of all the weathering vids and such. Very few say anything about the trucks. A lot of those are bery basic add some rust color and call it good. So what are some various reciepes some have found to achieve different weathering effects on trucks? Is there a good base color to start with?
I spray the trucks with DullCoat and put some chalk powder on them. For some variety, I put a small amount of artist paint of raw umber, raw sienna, and burnt umber wtith a toothpick or small brush on them. Even mixing up the different paint colors conveys variety.
It is a matter of color/shade and texture. Almost any dark color other than pure dead black is an improvement over the unpainted originals. I have used dark browns and even dark olive greens of a camouflage color of spray paint.
Flat surface texture rather than shiny. Wheel faces in the solid bearing era tended to have a splatter pattern of oil from the journals (early in the 1960s an effective gasket was invented and offered but I suspect few railroads wanted to invest in their solid bearing trucks at that point). Wheel faces in the roller bearing truck era tend to be a fairly uniform color. Sometimes when poor ballast has caused mud to pump up around the rails you do see wheel faces with an almost tan or khaki splatter of mud here and there on the wheel face.
The one exception to my first point is very new freight cars, where I have seen trucks (and sometimes couplers) where the rust on the wheel face is a bright orangey red. It has not yet darkened with dirt and patina of age. But even then the texture is not shiny.
You’re right, there’s no set way to weather. I usually check the prototype to get started. On my current project, it appears the trucks and wheels on the prototype are worn and faded black, with some dust and dirt, some light rust around the axle and bearings.
I started with some de-canned Rustoleum Dark Grey Primer, thinned 50%, then applied with an airbrush, here’s the result.
This is the first step, it sure beats the shiny black plastic and metal. I still need to apply some weathering chalks and a few little details.
Some other projects I start with Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer.
a) I will save this thread as I am going to address my fleet
b) I recently decided to try an easy “80/20” apporach to the last 2-3 freight car kits. I install metal wheelsets, so I paint the wheels & axle (other than the tread) with grimy black, using a microbrush and PollyScale (water based) grimy black. And paint the truck with tranished black. It’s a huge improvement over the shiny black plastic trucks and shiny Intermountain wheels.
I do not plan to get into weathering car bodies, but who knows long term?
None of my freelanced home roads use painted trucks, and only a handful of interchange cars (based on real railroads) have painted trucks.
I do paint all wheels, though, and since I’m modelling the late '30s, the wheel faces get an application of dirty black or very dark green, while the backs of the wheels and the axles get a coat of rust-coloured paint (not a “named” ready-to-use “Rust”, but various colours mixed from left-overs from other painting projects).
This work is always done with a brush and almost always with the wheels in the trucks, and, in many cases, with the trucks still installed on the cars.
I also use a brush to paint the trucks’ springs, whether they’re actual springs or ones cast as part of the trucks’ sideframes. Colours range from various shades of rust or grey, and I’ve done some with a semi-metallic “Graphite” colour, too.
For trucks with actual springs, I add a small piece of black plastic behind the springs to get rid of the see-through appearance, as the see-through effect isn’t prototypical.
The trucks are weathered in the same operation which weathers the car on which they’re installed, so, in most cases, the last dirt the car accumulated also accumulated on its trucks and wheels. In some instances, I will add some extra “dirt” to the trucks’ sideframes after the main weathering process by applying some oil-based powdered artists’ pastels. These are sold in stick-form, wrapped in paper like a child’s crayon: peel off the paper, rub the end of the pastel stick over some fairly coarse sandpaper, then dump the resultant “dust” into any convenient small container - I use the clear plastic “bubbles” in which small items are packaged on a cardstock backing. I use various old or cheap brushes for applying the powder: dab it on for irregular surfaces (like the truck sideframes) or brush it onto smoother surfaces, such a
Dr. Wayne’s postings are always worth staying awake during and thoroughly digesting! And note how what he has done makes the detail “pop” on the truck sideframes, regardless of make or cost.
For easons not entirely clear even to me, I have long used a lot of film (and now, digital pixels) taking pictures of freight car trucks and wheels over the years, including older cars at museums or on dead lines. If if it possible to generalize, the truck sideframes and wheel faces (and backs) tend to weather to the same general tone – be it a brown which is on the reddish rust side, or a gray which is on the charcoal-but-not-black side. Not mixed and matched however.
And if you really lay on your back and look up at the underframe, which at my age is becoming less probable (or are “lucky” enough to be at a wreck site or place where freight cars are scrapped) you’ll see the underframe share those tones and textures.
It may be that even the best looking weathered trucks and wheels would not look entirely right if held up against a prototype for comparison of color but the point and goal is to make the wheels and truck visible and obviously “aged” in some way. Out of the box wheels and trucks either shine in an improbable way or are so black they just disappear making the car seem to float above the rails – like some “low rider” automobiles with neon lights around the bottom edge that you sometimes see “in the 'hood.”
I paint/weather my trucks in batches. I use only Kadee trucks/wheels, and I do not like the factory color on them, so painting is a must. The factory black just disappears in the shadows under the freight car.
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I paint the trucks and wheels with colors that might seem very innapropriate at first glance. This gives a lot of variety to the overall fleet of freight cars. These colors will be blended into grime and rust in the next step of the process.
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Then I apply multiple washes of Citadel Colour to the assemblies. I use “Fuegan Orange”, Carroburg Crimson", “Agrax Earthshade”, and " Nuln Oil" in that order of application. This shifts the original colors to something more weathered and appropriate. The Citadel Colour Shade Washes dry to a relatively flat finish and this makes them very useful. This also brings out all of the deatil in the sideframe castings.
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The colors might initially look a bit garish and too light, but remember… the trucks and wheels are almost always in the shadows under normal viewing, and we cannot duplicate the effects of natural daylight. We need to exagerate the colors to simulate the sunlight effect.
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Click the picture to enlarge it for a better view.
Have had trouble over the years with airbrushed Floquil paint adhering to the shiny slippery plastic trucks. The paint often cracks when flexing the trucks during installation of the wheelsets; from there the paint begins to flake off.
Washing the trucks with dishsoap and a spray of Dullcote as a primer helped, but some still cracked and flaked.
Tried using an automotive adhesion promoter primer spray before the Floquil color coat and no cracking when installing the wheelsets. So far so good.
Maybe it’s the Floquil/dio-sol?
As suggested on this thread using a primer color coat may work just as well while saving the primer step.
Dr. Wayne, what type of paint do you use for the trucks? Even more steps can be saved by applying paint via brush without removing the wheelsets from the trucks as you do, and of course the results are outstanding.
Peter, for the trucks which are actually painted (the few I have are some version of boxcar red) I’ve used both Floquil and Pollyscale, but neither of those paints stand up all that well to handling. I bought a can of that adhesion enhancer stuff, too, but haven’t had an opportunity to use it. I was tempted to spray some into/onto something suitable, then use a brush to apply it to the Delrin sill steps which Accurail includes with their Dominion-Fowler cars. However, I installed the steps after the cars were painted and lettered, so simply brushed on some Pollyscale. Sill steps don’t get handled much at all after they’ve been installed.
I’d guess that the weathering which I airbrush onto the Delrin trucks isn’t all that durable either, but trucks usually don’t get much handling, either.
I have, in the past, sandblasted Delrin sideframes (at a fairly low pressure) and also using baking soda, and have used a Paasche “Air Eraser” with aluminum oxide, too. All of those episodes were for sideframes which I intended to paint. The paint seems to be still in place, but I don’t know if that’s due to the mechanical etching of the plastic or the fact that the trucks don’t get handled.
The only time I remove wheelsets is in order to use a truck tuner, and I very seldom replace plastic wheels unless it’s necessary for a car under construction.
I did notice something about freight car wheels when I was out raifanning, though, and it took me some thought to figure it out.
Note the shiny face of the wheel rims on this gondola…
…or on this flatcar…
Looks to me as if they’ve fairly recently been through the retarders in a hump yard - another det
I don’t paint the rims on mine, as I generally reference specific car photos for truck weathering. I just assumed that it was a function of the brakes or something. Plus I like how it looked
I airbrush mine with a custome “dirty” mix, mainly brown, but have various amounts of grey, weathered black, rust, and light/dark browns. All made from thinned craft acrylic’s. (These dry dead flat, so that’s another bonus!)
I say various, because, I accidentally forgot to record the exact recipe, so there are some that are slightly different than others.
My accident, like Bob Ross used to say, was a happy accident.
What I thought was a mistake, turned out for the better, as now, some trucks have a slightly different color than others.
I use the same mix (bottle) for a batch of trucks, and their wheelsets, to make them all match. Then, when I start running low, mix up another bottle.
Instant (originally unintentional, but nice) variety in weathering on the trucks and wheelsets.
Unless I have a photo showing otherwise, my default is to paint freight car trucks to match the car body, as this appears to have been the most common practice in the era I model (1960s). It doesn’t have to be an exact match, because the next step is to weather them. Trucks, wheels and underframes are more exposed to various sources of dirt and grime than the rest of the car, and are at least partially sheltered from the weather, so they tend to get dirty faster than the rest of the car but don’t fade as much as roofs and sides. They’re also not as exposed to spilled lading, which can be a major weathering factor on the rest of the car (eg. covered hoppers in concrete service). Therefore, over time all trucks tend towards a similar look, with the exception of the presence or absence of light-coloured dust, which is a noticeable weathering element that is picked up in certain environments but usually doesn’t last through heavy rains.
So, in my fleet, the main variation in truck weathering from one car to the next is the heaviness or intensity of the weathering, based on how recently the car was painted, and the presence or absence of dust as mentioned above. I take the wheels out of the trucks for painting and weathering (I use steel wheels exclusively). I use a grimy or weathered black paint for ‘black’ trucks, and on the axles and wheel faces. I then add a bit of rust to the outer wheel faces using chalk powder. I have powder in multiple shades of rust, and vary the tone and intensity a bit from one car to the next. Trucks in a colour other than black always get at least a light dose of dark chalk powder (as other posters have noted, the exact colour doesn’t matter much). Heavily weathered trucks might then get some rust highlights, using either chalk powder or paint brushed on. For a dusty look, I prefer to use an airbrush. In this case I reattach the trucks to the car and do it all at once (after all other weathering is done), which I think yields a more realistic effect.
The big thing is to kill the glossy black plastic look. I give the trucks a coat of red auto primer, and then brush paint the wheel faces with grimy black on friction bearing trucks and dust or mud color for roller bearing trucks.
