A Reefer for the C&N and Calamity

Believe it or not (and I know you model railroaders do) the refrigerator car did indeed exist in 1880. I managed to acquire one of Bachmann's privately owned Reefers on Ebay for a good price although not quite the one I really wanted but I am on a budget for these things. Its pretty pristine right out of the box so I decided to take an evening and do a little weathering. Not my best work but good enough is sometimes all I need. It at least looks like its been in the great outdoors for a bit.

Pictures always tell the story better than me so here we go:

The John Howard Refrigerator Car

A quick fade using thinned down Liquitex ink

Adding some soot, I think I over did it at this point

The other side

Adding some dirt to the bottom

Added some rust but overall not feeling good about it

Trying to get the soot to streak down between the boards

Happier with this now

The beauty shots

ATSF Recent Freight Car Acquisition

And by recent I mean arrived today! I haven't wanted a set of the express boxcars for sometime and I finally got them at a good price on eBay. Quite happy with that purchase. The second purchase wasn't quite so good. I didn't read the description or look at the photos closely enough on the auction for these. I thought I was buying ATSF SFRC mechanical refrigerator cars, instead these are ATSF (at least I got that part right) SFRD which are ice bunker refrigerator cars. Not sure that I could even technically use these on the 1974 -78 era layout. I probably will anyway, I'm not that much of a stickler and they probably won't look out of place on the layout anyway.