My first entry, we are in europe, hence the 4 wheels type with spoked wheels and buffers. This was, when i bought it, a german tank car of the late 1800s. Bought for no more than 5 bucks (eurobucks) and became in less than an hour, a non revenue car, used by my freelance railroad to more diesel fuel around the network. Yes, 19K liters (5K gallons) may seem very few from an US perspective, but here is more than 6 full fuel tanks for a standard mainline diesel, so enough for a few days, more than one week if you move 3 or 4 of these. Here parked close to the diesel refuel pad.
Nice detail on your tank car, Maurizio. And you're right about 5000 gallons being small for this side of the Atlantic - that comes to just about a full tank on just one mainline locomotive! Thanks for sharing that.
Could be a Lionel but Bachmann also made an identical one with the same road number. The manufacturer's name might be on the bottom of the underframe.
I tried something different today. Years ago, I found a graffiti program and made some graffiti. I bought some waterslide paper today and tried my hand at putting the graffiti on an old boxcar. This is my first try so if anyone knows how to make this graffiti show off better, please let me know. The colors are pretty bright - yellows, reds and blues. Also if someone could tell how to use the selector pictured, I would appreciate it.
I've tried this before - not with graffiti, but similar idea with colored lettering and graphics - and had results similar to yours on dark-colored rolling stock. The printer is printing for a white paper background. It factors in the whiteness of the paper in printing the graphics. So the brighter colors will be somewhat transparent. The box car is a dark reddish-brown. That's the color getting through the transparent bits and darkening (and changing the color of) your decals. I haven't figured out a way to get around this.
Due to health problems, I have some cars and an engine for sale in the swap meet section if anyone is interested. Will post more as time goes on. Here is the link: https://trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/ho-boxcar-for-sale.146979/#post-1242771
Another former german 4 axle old style vagon. Also this (and another of the same) was bought for a few eurobucks, I needed a car for my beer factory (A real one that went out of business in the early 30s, but still lives on my railway, and provides a LOT of traffic). Since the car is from the late 800, this represents a private car almost at the end of its service life (still surviving because it has brakes fitted), bought obviously used by the brewery to ship beer related products. The macro is unforgiving, I could have done the black better, and the car is still lacking weathering on the underframes as I was waiting to gen an airbrush. All decals are self made on coreldraw and printed on my a normal laser printer. Not the best but every now and then a rust bucket, actually (being wooded, more of a critter cove), can roll around.....
What's that outhouse-like thing hanging off one end? Guard post? Never seen something like that. Nice weathering job. It really looks like it's seen a lot of history.
The outhouse thing is the place for the brakeman, older wagons in europe have these because they were not fitted with air brakes at the time of building. Also some fitted had it because of labor requirements and the fact that the train may not have a continuous air line. Having the brakes fitted i should have boarded it.
Nice that they thought a little about the brakeman's comfort and safety. Way better than hanging out on top of rocking car in rain, sleet, snow, freezing cold, etc., waiting for the signal to start setting the brakes... I nearly sprained an ankle just thinking of that.
Mike, earlier cars had just a seat, so the poor lads were exposed to anything the locomotive and the god of weather would throw at them. At least no running boards this side of the pond as far as i know.