An ACF 2-bay Covered Hopper for Rust Practice

[ednadolski]

Hi crew, thought I'd share this one, its an Athearn HO scale 2-bay covered hopper that I wanted to use as a 'practice' car to try to develop some rust pitting & streaking skills.   It's not a proto effort, tho I did refer to several proto shots as a guide.  This started as a 'Rock Island"; I wet sanded the lettering to fade it, then masked the patched areas and sprayed over them with a light gray from a rattle can.  I tried not to go too heavy so that some slight trace of the lettering would still be visible, but it's a bit hard to see in the pics since they came out a bit over-exposed.

For the rust I used burnt umber paint, acrylics for the patches and water-mix oils for the streaks.  I've found that the acrylics works for the dabbing since it dries quicker, and the oils are easier to create streaks.   The trick tho for me is to get the streaks all vertical and parallel, and then I also want to try to figure out a way to do them that is less tedious -- for this car, I did most of the streaks individually with a fine pointed brush, which is good if you really want to put them in an exact place, but it does take a lot of time.  I did try doing streaks with a wide, flat brush but found that harder to control to get the effect I was after.

I'd love to hear from everyone on your thoughts, techniques, and suggestions for doing rust pits and streaks.

Thanks,
Ed

[wazzou]

That looks really good Ed.

[ednadolski]

Thanks Bryan, glad you liked it.  BTW, sorry about the 'seasonal disconnect' between the model trees and the live trees. 

Ed

[NorfolkSouthern9708]

Haha! I didn't notice the trees, I was more focused on the car! On a scale of 1 to 10 this car gets an 11. Great job Ed!  ;D

[Mark5]

very believable treatment

[tom mann]

That looks really good Ed, but we need to see a close up to better determine the scale of each rust patch. ;D

The tree on the right - is that a model of one of the oaks around the Tehachappi area?  How is it modeled?

[Coxy]

Ed,

Looks just fine to me. Nice definition in the rust streaks.  What l like about this car is that the amount of fade (implied age of the car) is consistent with the amount of rust. I would be on cloud nine if I could turn out results like this.

- Coxy

[GaryHinshaw]

Ed, it looks fantastic, as usual.  Good point about the acrylics and oils.  Have you tried a comb brush for the streaks, a la Tom?  This might not be very good for HO though.

Cheers,
Gary

P.S. Be sure to give him your tree recipe, he's got to get cracking on his layout.   

[ednadolski]

Thanks guys!   Tom, the tree is pretty straightforward - Sweetwater armature, poly fiber, and some WS fine ground foam sprinkled on and held with hairspray.   The only slight trick is to tease the poly fiber *really* thin, before applying the ground foam, and then again afterwards to puff things out & preserve the see-thru look.  Lastly, trim of any excess fiber/foam that looks out of place.   It's theoretically supposed to represent a Tehachapi oak, but the real ones can sometimes be a bit more 'skinny' looking and droopy-looking, at least to my eye.

Gary, I did try the comb brush but found it hard to control.  Sometimes it would take off too much, or not enough, or the streaks would turn out too short/long, etc.  Consistency is a bit of a trick on a curved surface like this too.  Another thing I found was using alcohol to try to flow the paint could get dicey, too much will start to take off the Dullcote layer, and create a real mess.   That's what made this a practice car, I had no idea whether it would come out OK or join my growing collection of failed/abandoned/limbo efforts  

Ed

[ednadolski]

<Fixed broken Photobucket links>

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Holy ***** that was 13 years ago.

Also, I have some feedback for you. The weathering looks great but it's sold out by the lack of a COTS box.

I've lately started paying WAY too much attention to freight car "tells": ACI labels, AEI tags, U1 dots and the different varieties of COTS boxes: two box, four box, three box, and now, none.

That car likely needs a three box COTS since, as stenciled, painted and beautifully weathered, it looks like a car in service between 2000 and 2023 that has lived through the two and three box eras. That means it'd either have the boxes themselves or a ghost where they were (since they're no longer required).

Enjoy that rabbit hole...

[ednadolski]

Yeesh, 13 years.....  and three houses ago.... 

I can do a COTS.... will have to check thru my stash of HO decals.   Must be more like an early 2k, given the lack of tags.  Now, that car has P:87 wheels and Sergent couplers.

Ed

[muktown128]

Ed,

That weathered hopper looks pretty darn realistic to me.  I'd say that you nailed the rust and fade effects. 

Scott

[craigolio1]

Man if that was “practice”….. then I want to see what you’ve done in the past ten years that you would consider to be an IMPROVMENT!

Ha!  Very well done sir.

Craig

[jagged ben]

Inspirational.