I am in the process of upgrading my paint system, and with the discontinuation of Model Master, I want to switch over to Tru-Color paint. Last year, I built that Southern Hogshead boxcar, but I never finished the decals. I thought my glosscoat was not very good, and the decals seem a bit silvered. I was not very happy with the paint color either, so I am considering stripping it and starting over with Tru-Color instead of the Tamiya paint I used before. I am thinking about getting new decals and repainting the car into the NS scheme, which I thought would be more appropriate for my 2001 date. Trainlife has the Model Railroading magazine archive online for free, and the February 2003 edition has some photos of these cars: I am thinking about doing the middle scheme with the NS logo. At least 9751 and 9756 received the new logo, I'm not sure about other cars. I know some lasted in the 'Green Light' scheme until the end, but the 2001 date on the above photo makes me think this would be a better car to have on my railroad since I know it was still in service during 'my year'. However, I don't know of a Tru-color paint match for NS freight cars. They have so many different 'freight car colors' that it's overwhelming, and seeing the little color sample online doesn't always yield an accurate result compared to natural light. Has anybody painted an NS car before; what color did you use? If there is an exact match, that's great, but I'm fine with a 'close enough' color as well. I used Tamiya XF-86 NATO Brown on the first go-around, and honestly, it doesn't look that bad for the NS scheme. A Tru-Color substitute for that one would work well, or a close railroad color would be good too.
It carried tobacco in big barrels called Hogsheads (http://southern.railfan.net/images/archive/southern/freight/tob/sou9799.html), but in later years, they were used to haul Goodyear tires out of Danville VA. I think they were out of tobacco service by the 90's, since some of the photos I have seen of them during that time were taken out of tobacco territory. I thought it would better suit my railroad to repaint my model into this version of the car. While they are extremely rare cars, it could be fun to mix it in with 60' and 89' boxes on an auto parts train. Southern also had some 85' boxcars in tobacco service. They looked like the more common 89' auto parts cars, but the trucks were right at the ends of the cars, which gave them a weird extra-long look: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1078750 They have a much more conventional roof design since they were built by P-S. The Hogshead cars were in-house cars by Southern. I just recently learned about the P-S cars, and I have never seen a model of them either. According to a Southern Railway groups.io thread, these ended their careers as canstock cars.
Here is my model as I left it last year: I used Microscale sheet 87-14 for the ‘Green Light’ scheme, but that sheet lacks any of the data or door stencils, and I never got around to ordering some data decal sets, so I just never finished the model. I also left off the rivets on the side sill. In the photo on my first post, you can see some clusters of rivets on the sill where the crossmembers connect to it. It’s a pretty small detail, but I figured that if I’m going to redo the decals, I could strip the model and add some more details I left off the first time around. The NS version also allows me to blank the upper windows, something I was dreading on the Southern car. I wasn't sure how to glue them to the model without having to do some crazy paint tricks.
