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Regular poster 181 posts Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike Regular poster 181 posts
Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike

This weekend I made my first attempt at weathering rolling stock using acrylic and enamel paints, Bragdon weathering powders and Testers Dullcoat. The hopper is an Accurail kit and it took about 4 hours from initial kit building to finishing up the weathering. This is an Airslide Center Flow (ACF) Kansas City Southern (KCS) hopper that was put into service in 1994 and is showing it's 15 years of use on the rails.
Here is the before shot...
Before Weathering of KCS ACF Hopper

The image below is a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) and it is meant to approximate an early morning splash of orange sunrise.

This is the After shot...

KCS ACF Hopper Before
Here are a few more images with some other weathered rolling stock too...
KCS ACF Hopper After

Weathered Rolling Stock

I also started a renovation on my grandfathers old Rock Island Pulpwood car. This piece of rolling stock is the only known surviving piece from his old HO layout from the 1950's, he took it down in the mid 1960's and donated it to a local Boy Scout troop in Alexandria, LA near where he lived in Pineville, LA. The decals had long since fallen off and it has some peeling paint and such, so I took the load off and sanded down the peeling paint, removed the trucks and repainted the shell. The pulp wood load is a bunch of old wooden matches that were cut to about 5' to 5 1/2' HO scale lengths and stacked and glued. I'll post some photos of the renovate and after when I get em sorted and loaded online. This is the Pulpwood car before I started the overhaul...

Pulpwood Car

My grandfather had this piece on display on top of his dresser in his bedroom for years, I guess it was his only reminder of days gone by.

Ryan Boudreaux

My current layout, a work in progress since 2018:

Norfolk Southern Alabama Great Southern South District (AGS) and New Orleans & Northeast (NONE) District

My deprecated layout, dismantled in 2017:

The Piedmont Division Model Railroad
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jarhead Prolific poster 1,734 posts
jarhead

Weathering

Ryan,

Very nice weathering job. I need to do that to my rolling stock. It makes a world of difference when the rolling pieces are weathered.

 

 

Nick Biangel 

USMC
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marcoperforar Regular poster 351 posts
marcoperforar

Nice job

The weathering looks great: realistic looking.

Last Wednesday I happened to be at the Truckee, CA depot along the Union Pacific.  While there, a westbound train of modern refrigerator cars passed by.  They were an off-white color.  I noticed very little natural weathering; however, every car had graffiti and outlaw painting on the lower third of the whole length of the body, and the car reporting marks weren't spared.  While natural weathering takes months or years to take effect, it seems outlaws now disfigure railroad cars much sooner.  Good thing I'm not modeling contemporary times.  It makes modeling easier.  Rust, dirt, and such are much easier to render compared to the outlaws' artwork.

Mark Pierce
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Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike Regular poster 181 posts
Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike

You mean like this...

BADX anhydrous ammonia tank car with a few tagging's on it....

 

Looks like the outlaws caught up with that one...

And thanks for checking out my work, really appreciate your comments too! Thanks! 

Ryan Boudreaux

My current layout, a work in progress since 2018:

Norfolk Southern Alabama Great Southern South District (AGS) and New Orleans & Northeast (NONE) District

My deprecated layout, dismantled in 2017:

The Piedmont Division Model Railroad
Reply 0
marcoperforar Regular poster 351 posts
marcoperforar

Yes, but ..

Ryan, just multiply the outlaw art about ten-fold and you'd have the effect I saw on every car.  It needs to cover the whole length of the car and about a third of the way up the car.

Mark Pierce
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jarhead Prolific poster 1,734 posts
jarhead

Graffiti

Mark,

Some of the cars that I see down here are the same way. It seems that some of them must take hours to do ! You can tell that it was done by the same individual because it carries the same theme throughout the graffiti.

 

 

 

Nick Biangel 

USMC
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Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike Regular poster 181 posts
Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike

I know.. I've seen quite a bit too...

Mark, I'll most likely only put some grafitti on a few cars for interest sake, but I will not be doing that to every piece. Still got about 200+ rolling stock in my inventory to weather.....

Ryan Boudreaux

My current layout, a work in progress since 2018:

Norfolk Southern Alabama Great Southern South District (AGS) and New Orleans & Northeast (NONE) District

My deprecated layout, dismantled in 2017:

The Piedmont Division Model Railroad
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marcoperforar Regular poster 351 posts
marcoperforar

Same here, Nick

Quote:

It seems that some of them must take hours to do ! You can tell that it was done by the same individual because it carries the same theme throughout the graffiti.

Yeah, Nick.  That was the same pattern on that Truckee-sited train.  Actually, much of it was very artful, but on an inappropriate canvas.  There must be many a master-mind artist with numerous disciples to keep the entire United States railroad car fleet marked.

Mark Pierce
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Joe Brugger Prolific poster 1,014 posts
Joe Brugger

Nice work on the covered

Nice work on the covered hopper, Ryan. Are you working from memory or from photos in applying the grime and rust?
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Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike Regular poster 181 posts
Ryan Boudreaux GoldenSpike

A little of both...

Joe, I have some images of prototypes and used a bit of artistic license to come up with my weathering.

Ryan Boudreaux

My current layout, a work in progress since 2018:

Norfolk Southern Alabama Great Southern South District (AGS) and New Orleans & Northeast (NONE) District

My deprecated layout, dismantled in 2017:

The Piedmont Division Model Railroad
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