Weathering powders/motor tool

Apologies to those who've seen these before, but here are a couple pics of an IAIS MOW flat that started out with an unpainted gray plastic deck.  I scrubbed in Bragdon weathering powders, then used a wire brush attachment on my Dremel tool in order to give the plastic deck a more worn look.  This had the added benefit of exposing the light gray P2K deck underneath the weathering. Among the clutter I added were ME ties (whole, as well as shavings), ME rail, strips of Chart-Pak tape (painted a mix of rust and bare steel colors to represent steel banding of various ages), some ballast, and a few weeds made from ground foam.

Close up of the new clutter. Using prototype photos as a guide, I inserted a few pieces of ME ties in random stake pockets.  To rough up the appearance of the deck, I cut into the ends of the boards with sprue nippers.

Joe, let me give you my address..

So that you can send me your excellent car!  That is one fantastic looking weathering job!

Another Option

I really like how Joe's car turned out above. 

Note that the only thing weathered on this car so far is the deck.  I used a razor saw and sandpaper to add texture to the deck of this Athearn car.  Using prototype photos as a guide, I dry-brushed several similar colors of acrylic craft paint.  As the paint accumulates it builds texture in the direction of the wood grain, which provides a more effective base for later layers of paint.  I started with mostly black, and moved toward lighter tans and grays.  Toward the end of the process I used a smaller brush to paint individual boards.

Wow!

Full disclosure

Thanks for the kind words.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I arrived at that weathering powder/wire brush solution completely by accident.  My first attempt at that car's deck looked like this:

Some kind folks at the Proto-Layouts list and on the old Atlas Forum encouraged me to take it further, which led to the changes seen in the images in my first post.

Clark Propst was just discussing fear on the P-L list this morning, such as the fear of messing up a model we've put a lot of time into, and how important it is to have the confidence that you can fix or hide your mistakes.  This car is an example of that.  It wasn't that I was confident that this method would work out, because it very easily could have gone south on me.  However, I've messed up enough in the past that I was confident I could somehow hide my mistakes if this didn't pan out, usually by layering on weathering of other types.  In this case, more tie bundles or junk on the deck could have helped disguise problems if things hadn't turned out how I wanted.  Often times, our fixes add more texture and interest than if we'd gotten it "right" on the first try.

Thanks...

Thanks to Joe and Rob for their phots and ideas.  I will try the craft paint idea and go from there.  I am attempting to model a C&EI COFC flat car with two trailers.  For the period I am modeling, the deck would be relatively new and wouldn't need the beautification Joe added to his flat car.

Thanks guys,

Dave

"the deck would be relatively new"

    This one looks fairly new. I took a sharpie and dotted in some bolt heads which helps the effect.....DaveBranum   

Another method

Get a laser cut wood deck and glue it down (or some come with pre applied sick-um) to the deck you have.  I like Flo-quil stain (and someone still has a few bottle on e-bay, I bought some form him and as long as you shake before opening...)  Stain the wood, then apply knicks and sanding.  Let the Flo-quil sink right in.

Great example

The first flat car does look

The first flat car does look very good, but more in the Malcom Furlow vein of things.  My own preference is a little less extreme, so I like Rob Spanglers deck which looks more like an "in service" flat car for regular lumber hauling rather than a flat car which is nearly ready to park in the siding due to extreme EOL condition.

Extreme

Jim, I agree that some of my effects would be extreme for a car in revenue service, and that Rob's is a better representation of such a prototype.  The flat I modeled was in MOW service, and at least on the IAIS, that meant it was in pretty rough condition.  Here's my only photo of the prototype for my car:

It showed the rough deck board ends that I tried to replicate, but since it didn't provide a look from above, I relied on this view of sister MOW flat IAIS 9011 for the deck details:

Unlike Mr. Furlow, I'm not a very creative person.  I like to just model what I saw on my prototype, and that's what I was attempting in this case.  The larger tie bundles on my model were created to conceal weights, since the P2K model was so light.

Flat car decks

Rob- nice work. That deck looks really sharp.

Dave- when I read your initial post, I had just come up from re-weathering the decks of several of my flat cars. The photo below shows how they looked prior to this.

They looked too gray to me and didn't seem to reflect the washed out look that the wood gets after years of service. Rob and Joe have captured the look very effectively on their cars. I lightly dry brushed Apple Barrel brand Khaki colored acrylic craft paint across those boards that I thought looked too dark. When I went back and looked at them yesterday, there was still something missing. So I went back and lightly dry brushed FolkArt steel gray colored craft paint across random boards. The final result shows in the photo below.

It's now much closer to the look I'm trying to achieve. Years ago I never would have kept working on this car for fear of messing it up. To Joe's point, I now have the confidence to go back over things that didn't quite turn out the way I had planned. More often than not, the second, third or fourth attempt is successful. I wish I had learned this lesson much sooner!

Tom Patterson

Update

I love the looks of your car Tom.  Great work on the update.

Dave, really neat idea adding the bolt heads with a Sharpie.  What scale is that?

"bolt heads with a Sharpie. What scale is that?"

                                                                                                                                                                                           Hi Joe , It's an O scale car old time truss rod car I got on ebay. Probably was built from an old kit, I got it built and added some details like new trucks, cut levers, weathering etc.........DaveBranum

Re: Tom

Your revised weathering turned out great.

For an extremely weathered deck

Here you can see a flat car i made up to is on a siding with a wrecked crane. I simply laid new boards down on top of the car. Before i installed the boards i roughed them up with an xacto blade and weathered them. For the areas where it shows through i cut out the original floor and broke the boards before putting them in.  

Espen L. Marsh

Flat Car Weathering

Oops- forgot the reason I originally checked out the thread.....

My Flatcar weathering method:

• Light brown stain
• Spray of gray primer
• Light sanding
• Spray of boxcar red
• Light sanding
  
   
  
  Rob Clark
  Cornhill & Atherton RR

Black on white

There is this:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/decks/

or other general old wood looks:

at:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/weathered_wood/

Thank you if you visit

Harold

ak interactive

ak interactive had a magazine deticated to weathering wood.  There also is a multipart youtube video.

More Weathering

I've been messing around with some flat cars recently, so may as well throw a photo in...

At top left is the Athearn car I showed earlier in the thread for purposes of comparison.  Coupled to it is an MDC 60' flat.  It received a combination of dry-brushed acrylic, acrylic washes, and some chalk dust.  Note that some of these Thrall cars had steel floors, and others wood, depending on what the customer ordered.

On the closer track are two ExactRail cars, the recent ones with the laser taskboard deck material (it's packaged separately to be installed by the user).  The deck on the car at left was weathered with acrylics essentially like I did the plastic cars, which did hide some of the texture.  For the remaining car, I tried a black wash, followed by heavy applications of chalk.  I still need to refine it some, but at least none of the detail was obscured.

My favored material for flat

My favored material for flat car or gondola floors is wood!

Painted only by "colored paint thinner".

See more on my blog https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/1900-models-66-gondolas-12196478 or the full project description on my website http://us-modelsof1900.de/?p=190 with a complete project gallery.

I'm building some 30' flat

I'm building some 30' flat cars and was wondering where can I find sheets of laser cut wood decking that I can cut to size and glue over the plastic deck. I see they make deck kits for specific cars but I would like to find a sheet and cut my own. I Need to do 20 cars so was thinking a laser cut wood sheet would do more cars at a lot less $$$$$ 

My method

My method is the same for either a laser cut wood deck or a plastic deck.  First I deepen the scribed lines of the individual boards in deeper.  Next I distress the deck by sand, scraping and cutting make sure that the ends of the boards get this treatment and little heavier.  Finally I paint the deck using acrylic paint in various shades of tan, concrete, black, and railroad tie brown.  

Here is my example of an Intermountain Penn Central flatcar:

My little contribution: a

My little contribution: a scratchbuilt flatcar in O scale. The deck is made of wooden strips. I used Humbrol paint diluted (dark brown and light grey matt colors) to weather this car.