A little freight car weathering

Calamity's new station was left at home this weekend. I didn't want to start assembling it and then transport it back to the workbench half built. That's always when accidents happen. To keep the current themes going I decided that I would work on a few of the freight cars that should see service in Calamity. I grabbed four boxes kind of at random (put back anything that was a passenger or passenger related car as well as cabooses, apparently I have a lot of passenger cars). The four boxes contained 2 D&RGW stockcars, 1 D&RGW gondola (short) and 1 unlettered tank car. I hesitated about working on the tank car since I didn't have any decals for it yet (I need to start working on some custom decals). I figured that it really wouldn't take a lot of work to add the decals afterwards when I finally had them. I'll just have to do another round of weathering. I also hesitated on doing both the stockcars, they have the same number and I really should change that or its going to look a little funny on the board (okay I admit that within the context of a game no one else is likely to notice).All of these are from Bachmann's Spectrum series and are RTR not kits. I also decided to try out a couple of different materials from my regular pigments, I purchased a set of Pan Pastels from Stoney Creek Designs sometime ago so I grabbed that box and I picked up some Prismacolor Pencils to see if I could be a bit more precise with some of the rust work and highlighting. I sat down and pulled everything out and got started. I remembered to take pictures so you don't have to put up with my ramblings to much.

Oh and (like many of my posts) this one is rather picture heavy.

A couple of things that didn't make it into the pictures. I didn't take pictures right out of the box, the models are a bit plastic looking right out of the box, so they all received a quick coat of testor's dullcoat to take away the shine and give the pastels a little tooth to hold on to. I also removed the trucks and popped the wheels out to make things a little easier to deal with.

Here is stuff I'm using; Pan Pastels (I actually only used about six of these), Liquitex Inks (ended up only using the Burnt Umber) and Prismacolor Pencils (again only used two of these). You can see disassembled trucks in the picture as well.

Here are the victims plus my cheap weathering brushes. What is missing from this picture are the sponges that I used to apply the Pan Pastels. The sponges work much better than a brush.

The gondola (all of the freight cars have had a coat of dullcoat at this point)

The tank car

One of the stock cars with their underframes in the foreground

Step 1, knock down the very black trucks with the pastels. On the left side is the straight plastic on the right is after a quick brush of Pan Pastel Neutral Gray Extra Dark. This looked good so I went ahead and did all the remaining trucks.

Here I have applied rust with a Prismacolor Pencil, Sienna Brown. this was went really fast, I just used the edge of the pencil on the edges of the metal. Looked pretty good and was fast. Its hard to really see the trucks once they are mounted back on the cars, but I hate to do anything in half measures.

Didn't forget the wheels either, each set received a coating of either Pan Pastel; Red Iron Oxide Shade or Red Iron Oxide

A truck with the weathering finished and re-assembled

The gondola gets a quick brush of straight Liquitex Burnt Umber Ink

This ink will re-activate with water so in a couple places where the decals were to dark I just went back in with a wet paintbrush and removed the excess ink.

The flatbed of the tank car gets the same coating of burnt umber

Okay, I forgot to take pictures of the gondola in progress but I remember to do it with the tank car. First I dulled the black again with another coating of Neutral Grey Extra Dark and streaked it down the sides. I worked in a little rust as well using both the Red Iron Oxide Shade and Prismacolor Burnt Ochre

The other side

The photos got a little skimpy but here are the underframes for the stock cars. On the left I have applied  both Pan Pastel Burnt Umber and  Yellow Ochre shade to grime up the bottom. On the right is the other underframe waiting for its turn.

The finished D&RGW Gondola

The finished Tank Car, it will get decals someday

One of the stock cars. Quite frankly I find them hard to tell apart at this point. I definitely need to go in and change that number. Maybe I'll just get some paint and change the 3 to and 8.

And that wraps up a weathering session for Calamity's RR.

Calamity acquires additional rolling stock

Over the last couple of weeks I have managed to acquire a few more pieces for the Colorado & Northwestern Railroad that will be serving Calamity. This time I found a 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler, a type that the C&N didn't actually own but the price was just to good to pass up. I'll do some research and see if another one of the Colorado narrow gauge railroads used this type and letter it appropriately. I finally managed to acquire a combine car, its painted in burgundy so it will have a date with the paint shop for a nice coat of Pullman green. I also, accidentally, acquired another passenger/observation car also in burgundy so this one will be reserved for the railroad brass. The last purchase was a pair of flat cars. At this point I would like one or two more cattle cars and, of course, box cars. I have managed to acquire one at this point and would like at least 2-3 more and I need some short bottom dump ore cars. Taurus Products makes these but since they batch produce who knows when they will be available not that there is a pressing need for these until I actually build the On30 layout itself (separate from Calamity). I have the Taurus ore cars in HO scale so at the very least I have plans for them that I could scale up and work from. I need to dig through my railroad magazines and see if I can find the article on modifying On30 cars to ride lower to the ground.

Here are a few pictures (bad, I know, one of my lights is out and apparently I'm out of bulbs). I included a picture of the 4-4-0 American  and the 2-6-0 Mogul just to give you an idea of the size of the locomotives. Now sizes varied a lot, there were big 4-4-0s and small 4-6-0s just depended on what a railroad needed and of course when they were built. Most of the locomotives made by Bachmann seem to be post 1900 so they aren't exactly right for my 1870 town of Calamity, but they are close enough, my players certainly aren't going to care.

4-6-0 Ten Wheeler - At the very least it needs to be re-lettered for a Colorado railroad.
Updated: Looks like I have a couple of options Rio Grande Southern and Denver & Rio Grande. I'm leaning towards the D&RGW for this one as it should be easy to find decals ready to go, although the RGS's scheme is a bit more interesting.

4-6-0 with the gang

4-4-0 with the gang

2-6-0 looks like this one needs another photo session so you can see the whole thing

Flat Car

Combine or Combination Car - so named as one portion was for baggage and the other for passengers

The Observation/Passenger Car - This one will be reserved for the Brass.