Railroad Weathering - it's All Natural

posted by Tony L. on Tue, 03/23/2010 - 23:21

In the real world, trains get DIRTY! As does anything else left exposed to the elements for decades at a time. Multi-million-dollar locomotives might be treated to a scrubdown and powdering every couple years or so as maintenance schedules and workshop backlogs dictate, but freight cars are virtually abandoned from the time they're built until the scrapper comes calling. With service lives of four decades and beyond, a typical veteran freight car becomes a rolling timeline of Mother Nature's toil and fury. Frying in the brightest sun, oxidizing in the pouring rain, festering in the deepest snow, on top of the wounds inflicted by the beatings and carelessness of humans.

Of course, the sum aged appearance of a freight car is determined by many other factors. Some types like tankers and intermodal racks are serviced quite frequently (as are certain small quantities of boxcars and hoppers) and may not normally cause tetanus on sight. A car damaged in a wreck or mishap may be treated to an overhaul while in the repair shop. As railroads merge, sell off and trade equipment, they evaluate their stocks and upgrade or repair accordingly. And during the billboard herald golden age from 1950-1980, numerous railroads reinvented their images and marketing slogans many times over - meaning old soldiers got to wear shiny new coats of paint, and what appeared to be a brand new car with a shiny coat of paint was often over 20 years old!

But give it time, and the cycle is unavoidable. And thus a realistic model train MUST have some sort of artistry applied, to mimic the effects of weather and humanity. Buildings are maintained, as automobiles and other outdoor vehicles - when they aren't they fall apart and disappear in clouds or rubble. Trains are a somewhat different beast.

Today, most cars are gigantic behemoths of similar construction, painted in homogenized shades of gray and brown, with tiny acronyms as the only clue to ownership. The "survivors" are now so old and beaten you can barely recognize them. But 20-30 years ago, in the era I choose to model - roughly 1975-1990 - freight cars were at their most dynamic. A grand mixture of sizes and styles still roamed the rails, in a dizzying array of roadnames and paint schemes. The graffiti taggers that plague today's rails weren't even born yet. Thousands of freshly painted freight cars glistened proudly, only just beginning to don the threads of time on their flanks. And the older survivors were in most cases very serviceable: worn if not beaten, useful under the dirt and rust, proudly showing names that hadn't yet become exclusive to "fallen flags".

Thus, my models generally reflect a more restrained weathering style. The prevailing school of thought among today's most accomplished weathering artists is that a single car should be done in layers, in a process that could take up to 18 hours for one car! I have tried this and earned accolades of my own, but the fact is most of my cars won't require this intensive attention - indeed, I can't afford the time anyway.

So while a few cars on this page took several hours to paint (guess which ones?), most were done in a quick fashion - an hour or two tops, using basic hand paints and washes. I find an airbrush to be too cumbersome for weathering, but love using chalks and powders. Most of these were done prior to 2007. I haven't done much since then but hope to rectify that soon. I'll probably need to shake the rust off my joints (onto the models, hopefully) and practice a bit on some junkers.

BTW, the L&N Car below was the first one I ever attempted to match a photo; I shot the pic in 2002, then finished the model in 2004 and won a few awards - dare I say even before the current weathering philosophy took hold in the hobby. The others are mostly "fantasy" jobs not meant to match a specific photograph, but look otherwise plausible. Not all are contest-quality, but when you have 400 freight cars to attack, they don't need to be!

Weathered railroad equipment

Athearn ACF 2970 2-bay Centerflow Hopper; Factory painted roadname:

Roundhouse PS-2 Hopper, "classic" kit; factory roadname:

Accurail ACF 3-bay 4350 Centerflow Hopper; factory roadname:

For some reason this was a favorite victim of mine... but it might give you an idea of the process (both in models and real life). This was the first version...