Here are some pics of the gondolas i weathered a few years ago. i first took a lighter and melted the edges to give them that beat up look . i also heated up a screw driver with a lighter and then used the heated surface to bent the walls of the gondola. i painted several layers of rustall on it to get the rusty look. The loads however, are made of actual scrap iron that i got out of a real gondola car. i jumped inside the empty car and picked up these metal shavings from the bottom of the car. some of these shavings that i have would look good on ho scale models and some are small enough to look goood on n scale.
this boxcar was pretty easy to weather i just painted rustall on with a cheap paintbrush. it took me three coats.
these cars were weathered with a different technique that i created myself. i simply just took an old can brown boot polish and applied it on the cars with a q tip. i then took a tissue and wiped off some of the excess polish. i never spray any kind of finish on it to preserve. I did these cars about four years ago and as you can see the polish stays looking good. I havent gotten around to it yet, but i suppose this same technique would work on coal hoppers with black boot polish.
Nice work Dan! I have to try the melting to make dents technique. I used techniques from Tom Mann's Weathering Guide to weather these cars, but I want to try a gondola with the melt technique now.
Nice work guys Here is a Bachmann car with the roofwalk removed and ladders shaved down. Another Bachmann car with a replaced roofwalk made from a cutdown Kadee HO roofwalk. I really like the shoe-polish idea.I am looking forward to trying that one.
Mmm, I love weathered cars. Here are a few recent boxcars: Nice work on the gons there Dan. I haven't worked up the courage to give one that kind of beating yet. Let's see some more! -Gary
Very nice work to all ! Those gondola loads look awesome in those weathered cars. I can't wait to dirty up some of my stuff after looking at these pics. Craig
I've had the most fun weathering my sugar beet train cars. Each is different, and makes a great looking train.
I like weathering threads . Nice work everyone. ConrailDan, that old beaten gondola is looking good pray59, thanks a lot for the link. You did a nice job applying that Tom Mann's tutorial weathering techniques. MOPACJAY, well done. Could you elaborate about your weathering techniques ? GaryHinshaw, great weathering, not overdone. I would like to have more details. Are you using atrist's oil paint ? OC Engineer JD, that sugar beets car sure looks good. I thought that all the sugar in U.S. ( and Canada ) was produced from sugar cane. Here is my contribution: GTW weathered using burnt sienna oil paint, airspray of roof brown, grimmy black and L&N gray plus a wash of grimmy black. I think that just a single wash of grimmy black on any new car alredy makes a big difference in killing that out of the box shine. Jacques
Thank you for the encouragement ConrailDan. I forgot to mention one important step: Before anything else, I airsprayed a very diluted coat ( 1 part paint for 16 part alcohol ) of the same base color as the boxcar ( in my case, Polly Scale # 414358 GTW blue ) . When that coat is dry, I take some off at random places using a BrightBoy rubber track cleaner. Jacques
This is a boxcar made out of wood. It's an old Gloor Craft kit, painted and weathered some years ago.