Weathered & Detailed UTLX Tank Car

[ednadolski]

Hi All,

I've just completed a weathering job on a Walthers HO scale tank car.  This effort was inspired by the tank car examples in Tom's weathering book - Thanks Tom!



My process was pretty similar to Tom's, except that I included some vertical grime & rust streaks, made with a brush using water-soluble oil paints. I also added some wire grabirons, stirrups, and cut levers, plus air hoses.  I originally had not intended to add any details, but the car made an unplanned, gravity propelled vertical descent from a shelf at almost shoulder height.  :-[  That broke off a couple of the stirrups but very surprisingly and very luckily did no serious damage otherwise.     So I figured since I had the pin vise out to make new stirrups I might as well add the other details.

The trucks are the Athearn 100T roller bearings.  I'm not sure if that is prototypically correct, but I wasn't going for high accuracy.  I weathered them with an initial coat of rattle can Grimy Black,  then painted with Model Master Dark Skin Tone, mixed with AIM weathering powders (various rusts/browns) applied by dabbing with a torn up wedge-type cosmetic sponge.  This gives a texture that isn't too apparent in the photo.  I then highlighted the weathering with some additional light gray and rust powders, applied with a fine brush.

Question: does anyone know of a nicely detailed, aftermarket modern tank car ladder?  I have another 1-2 of these in the works (might try some graffiti on one of those).

As always, please enjoy, and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

Ed

[GaryHinshaw]

This looks 'just right' to me Ed.  (Tom's example did too.)  I'm a big fan of subtle weathering like this.  Did you work from a photo?  Did you fade the black, or was that pretty much out of the box?  The only thing that bugs me about this shot is the slightly askew railing around the fillers...(sorry) and the fact that it's HO.   

Cheers,
Gary

P.S. Sometimes I give the top half of the tank a very slight patina of dust/rust with Bragdon powders, like this car:

http://picasaweb.google.com/GFHinshaw/RollingStock#5233177552227784818

It's a crappy photo, but if you zoom it you can kind of get the idea.  Not all tankers have that look though.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Very nice!

[tom mann]

That looks great, and reminds me that I have to finish the example I used in the book.

One thing you can do is take a foam brush, cut it in a thin strip, dab it in polyscale mud, and use it to paint dirt that the wheels throw up.

[ednadolski]

Thanks all for your comments.  Gary, you're right, I did do a slight fade, I'd been fooling with several fade techniques and IIRC this one used the transparent fade brew that you had come up with.  I did work from several proto photos but I wasn't trying to reproduce a specific car.  You're also right about the top railings, on the Walthers models these wire rails have a tendency to push thru the plastic walkways.  They're easy to fix but I was rushing to get the photo done and so I didn't check carefully enough  :-[  (There are also a few specks of dust I should have removed beforehand).

Tom, I did try to do some of the wheel spray, tho it's hard to see in this pic (I've really got to get better at taking photos, mine always seem to be grainy, poorly lit, bad depth of focus, etc.  I used to have one of those 18% gray cards, but I haven't found it in years).  The bottom coat of airbrushed PolyScale Dirt ended up diluting my attempt rather substantially.  However, in this image, you can see a bit of the "spray" on the right end of the car, behind the air reservoir. 

It's interesting to see how much that spray varies on the prototype:  from virtually nothing to a really heavy spatter, and the color can range from a light earthy gray to almost black:

http://www.railcarphotos.com/pix/12/UTLX%20203862_Gary%20IN_Mike%20Rapchak_2006-10-08_12142.jpg
http://www.railcarphotos.com/pix/7/UTLX%20641714_Carson%20CA_David%20Casdorph_2003-11-13_7939.jpg
http://www.railcarphotos.com/pix/21/UTLX%20205090_Galesburg%20IL_David%20Casdorph_2007-07-05_21965.jpg



Ed

[GaryHinshaw]

They're easy to fix but I was rushing to get the photo done and so I didn't check carefully enough  Embarrassed  (There are also a few specks of dust I should have removed beforehand).

Really, how dare you waste our time with such tripe.  (Tongue planted firmly in cheek here - the tanker looks great!)  FWIW, those railings still look better than most N scale rails.  Along those lines, I was looking at some of the Red Caboose coil cars yesterday, comparing the HO version to the N one.  Holy smokes, I have to stop doing that.

Tom - have you tried the wheel-spray technique in N?  I've never managed to get anything remotely convincing - just a couple of paint streaks.