Weathered CN Roofless Boxcar in Maizerets

The last batch of 40ft roofless boxcars is now completely weathered, except for the woodchip loads. I’m quite satisfied with the result. The cars look like they are at the end of their service life, which was the case.

Weathering was achieved using my habitual recipe:

1.    Spray heavily thinned down acrylic earth/skin tone wash to fade the color.
2.    Spray heavily thinned down acrylic blackish/brownish dirt tone wash in needed area.
3.    Let dry and dullcote.
4.    Use artist oil paint washed with mineral spirit to simulate weathered parts.
5.    Let dry.
6.    Make rush spots using artist oil acrylic straight from the tube.
7.    Let dry.
8.    Rub some pastel chalk were dust and dirt from wheels accumulate.
9.    Paint wheels a dirty/rusted brown shade.
10.    Rub some rust-colored pastel chalk on wheels and voilà!

I didn’t bother spraying a final dull coat because I think oil paints give a very convincing flat finish. I always think dullcote kills this nice effect. The cars won’t see real operation before a few weeks so there’s plenty of time for oil paint to dry and harden.

I still have 4 of these cars to weather. I think I’ll restrain myself a little bit more on them to get more color and weathering variation among nearly identical cars. Overdoing weathering is a sweet pitfall.