Many for sure but what I want to emphasize is the painted wheels. Months ago I posted a photo of two cars together, a RTR and one assembled from a kit. A member of this Forum replied that both would benefit from painted wheels.
When I switched from DC to DCC, I decided to swap all plastic wheels for metal ones. A good decision for track cleanliness and conductivity but those wheels are sometimes very shiny. When our fellow modeler mentioned that my cars would look better with painted wheels, I began painting the wheels before putting any new car on track. But I have a lot of existing cars. So now, when I swap couplers for Kadee’s ones (that’s another story), I take the time needed to paint the wheels too.
What a difference, even if I am not weathering my cars yet.
Painting wheels is something I have done on a few cars to. A lot easier weathering process compared to some of the more detailed stuff, and does improve looks quickly.
To totally ignore your paint-the -wheels point, aside from being 40’ steel boxcars? Everything!
Different roof paterns, different side rails, different door size. The CN looks to have a 6" lower internal hight, even the Red Oxide is different shades. Can’t compare the end stampings, laders, and grab irons but suspect they’re different too!
While I don’t think is the rust is specifically caused by the hydrogen sulphide in the air locally; it certainly doesn’t help, so I’ve always painted my weights and axles with a red oxide primer and given the wheels, even the plastic ones, a lick while I’m at it. I’ve also started giving the trucks a grey based acrylic wash. I think it works out OK.
on Flickr
Now the car needs a light weather!
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Another reason to paint and weather trucks and wheel faces is that pure dark black trucks and wheels disappear in the shadows and make a car look like it is floating above the rails. Even fairly cheap trainset quality trucks often have a nice amount of detail cast into them, which is nearly invisible unless the truck is painted and weathered.
If you want to get fussy about it (and some do) it pays to remember that wheels back in the solid bearing (so-called “friction” bearing) era looked different than do wheel faces in the roller bearing era. Until very late in the solid bearing journal era, when some new fangled gaskets were introduced intended to eliminate the problem, there was quite a bit of splatter of lubricant on the wheel faces, sometimes resulting in a considerable build up of gunk, and in a pattern which originated with the bearing and was thrown towards the wheel edge. Now and then you might find a very old MOW car that still shows this, or cars in a museum. It is a genuine texture.
Some guys use weathering powders for this. Others want those powders nowhere near the bearing itself. An alternative is to dab some acrylic paint on the wheel face with a micro brush or small swab to capture that texture.
There was often some oil splatter and leakage on the journal box and journal box cover itself in that era - again very late (too late) in the era gaskets were invented to prevent this, but by that time few railroads were going to spend good money on their solid bearing trucks. So journal boxes and covers can also benefit from some added weathering. The fresh oil was shiney black but it quickly attracted mud and grime and dust.
Wheels on roller bearing trucks are darkened by some grime and a patina of age on the metal but usually are otherwise fairly smooth in texture and reddish brown in color, unless the car has run through thick mud thrown up in poorly ballasted ar
Painting wheelsets to eliminate the shine makes a big difference. I now paint every wheelset before I put a car into service, even if I have time for no other changes.
I just added these Arrowhead Models hoppers, and didn’t have time before the weekend op session to do more than paint the wheels. This one step prevents the models from looking toylike, and is an important component of weathering.
I use mostly plastic wheels, but brush-paint all wheels before a car is put into service. I have an old bottle (the original square version) of Floquil Pullman Green which looks good on wheel faces, and paint the backs of the wheels and the axles with a rust or dirt-coloured paint. When weathering the cars, using an airbrush, the car is manually rolled back and forth to ensure that the wheel faces get an accumulation of road dust and grime, too…
This Westerfield Fowler boxcar has Kadee trucks…
…and I added a view block (piece of Kadee coupler box, but any black plastic will do) behind the springs. This prevents the see-through look, as most real trucks had a “spring package” which wasn’t see-through…
…the plastic is cemented to only the sideframe or the bolster, so the equalising action of the springs is not affected…
While railfanning, I noticed that while all cars’ wheels have the rusted/dirty appearance, which has previously been noted, for current day rolling stock with roller bearings, some have shiny wheel rims.
Do folks recommend the LaserKit wheel mask jigs? Is there an issue where sprayed paint gets too far onto the outside of the tread and requires removing some paint because some of the tread protrudes? Or does it come out just fine? Thinking of ordering some and addressing my wheels (and trucks).
Personally, I can’t see why anyone would bother using them at all. I paint all of the wheels, fronts, backs, and axles, using a 1/4" chisel-tipped brush. For this operation, the wheels stay in the trucks, and often, the trucks on the car, too.
No need to remove the wheels (which usually includes first removing the trucks), no need to load them in the masking jig, no need to re-install them in the sideframes and re-install the trucks, and no need to clean your airbrush either (something lots of folks seem to find onerous).
I don’t think the latter to be an issue, but the rest of it seems like a lot of effort for something which can be done faster and easier (and in the multiple colours that require only opening the second bottle of paint, if you’re modelling pre-roller bearing times).
Try Accurail. I throw their stock wheels out, but the recent examples I’ve seen were the same brown plastic as the Accumate couplers. If I’d known I could’ve saved you some.
In addition to hump yard retarders, I wonder if some of the shine on modern freight car wheel rims could be generated by the self guarding switch frogs that seem to be everywhere these days?
Train Miniature used to offer brown plastic wheels on metal axles, but they had at least one run of them where some wheels were out-of-round.
This is a re-painted and re-lettered TM car, and you can see the original brown wheel tread on the inboard wheel of the left truck, under the re-painted dimensional data…
The colour was actally quite suitable to represent rusted, but dust-covered wheel backs, but the brass axles still needed to be painted, as did the wheel faces.
Some folks complained about the trucks, which were sprung, but came in kit-form. The main complaint was that they didn’t flex enough to allow the trucks to equalise, but it was a simple matter to clean the flash from the parts before assembly. Done properly, they worked as well as Kadee’s sprung trucks. The car shown has those re-worked trucks, and I’ve also added the view block behind the spring package.
on Flickr
