I've done this car twice in n scale, so I figured I would do it in z too. The only thing I did differently in z is to use an airbrush to paint the white background of the KAP graf. In N, I brush painted it, and while it looked ok, that technique wouldn't have scaled down too well. I left off a lot of the little squiggly graf writings. I don't know, I just figured I couldn't get them too look good. My first attempt in N: http://www.mannresearch.com/rr/atsf/atsf152278_02.jpg My second attempt in N: http://www.mannresearch.com/rr/atsf/boxcars_01.jpg Oh, and the prototype:
I think it looks GOOD! Best grafitti i have ever seen ( i don't like grafitti too much) is a photo i saw. On the side of the UP car it stood: "We'll deliver" (UP slogan) and under it someone had written " sometimes"
Man that looks awesome~!~! You nailed the weathering coloring on the original car markings. Do you have a link to the N scale cars too?
Tom, That is just ridiculous it's so good! I'm really looking forward to your Ztrack article. I've really got to get on board with weathering. Thank you very much for posting this. John http://www.ztrains.com
John, Does this now mean that "dirt" is in? The weathering sure makes things look more realistic. Now we all need to get busy and "dirty" up our fleet. Loren
Hats Off!!!! Very nice job on both the weathering and graffti. When i get my modules done, i plan to make weathering and graffti my next big project. Tony B.... Wasatch Z Club
Congratulations for your fine work! But would you not have advantage to use graffitis decals? I know that in this area nothing has been designed for Z scale, but as there are graffitis made for N scale and as there is nothing more "random" than graffitis, that's the way I plan to follow when it's time for me to weather and apply graffitis on mine! I even plan to put the same graffitis on some samples of my motive power....:embarassed: Dom
Dom, I do make use of a lot of graf decals, so it depends on the source graffiti as to how I decide to either make decals or hand paint. If the graffiti is complex in design or colors, I'll try to redraw it and make decals on clear paper. Clear paper allows for edges that nicely blend in, but forces that the model has to be painted white behind the decal. Printed decals usually have a tell-tale printing pattern visible in photos. So the hand painted/decals approach really depends on a lot of things.
Inspiring! I gotta start building stuff again! My favorite graffitti I ever saw was a CSX boxcar that had every inch covered in graffitti except for the "X" in CSX. Never got a photo because the camera was still cycling from the "Tonka" flatcars of tractors a few cars earlier. Here is another interesting one from Railcarphotos.com: http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=19035 Randy
