The Weathering Depot

I recently picked up this previously weathered model on eBay, as I wanted this particular railroad and the boxcar seemed to be fairly nicely weathered. Sometimes though looks are deceiving.

Upon receiving the car I noticed in starting to tweak the weathering that I’d have to rework quite a bit on the car. This I discovered is an original Intermountain car. The car had all metal trucks and wheels which were replaced with plastic trucks and new semi-scale wheels.

When starting to weather the brake wheel the original one simply disintegrated, so a brake wheel off a junk car had to be fitted and then rusted. the underside of the car was still a bright, dark blue which was painted and weathered.

There were some imperfections on the car sides as well which were covered up by the light blue patches, plus the lube stencils had to be patched and new ones applied, as they were almost weathered over. Finally, the ACI plates were apparently decals that peeled right off, so these were replaced with brass plates from BLMA.

The weathering was then tweaked with more rust added to the crest of the roof, the frame sill and doors, and rust spots added to the car sides. This was followed up with a very light coat of dirt acrylic paint to blend everything in. Finally, the couplers were painted rust color. After sealing, this one’s ready to join the fleet. I’ll soon list a different car of mine on eBay to take this ones place.