When I upgrade a freight car, I split the work into two groups and prioritize accordingly. The first (and most important) group consists of upgrades that contribute the most to visual impact. I start with these. They are the things you notice when you first walk into the room and view the cars from five or six feet away. The nice thing with these steps is that they are “low-hanging fruit”, very simple steps that make an enormous difference. The second group, I call “just for fun” detailing. These aren’t as noticeable, but I find them simple, fun, and relaxing to add.
Visual Impact
When working with a plain Jane car of the forties, fifties, or sixties, the one step that takes priority, the one that creates the most impact by far, is dulling the car surface and adding a super subtle “haze” to tone down the white lettering. Painting the trucks and cutting the coupler trip pins off are also major priorities, second and third in line.
As you look at this typical UP car notice:
-The flat finish
-The subtle haze. It’s typically some form of burnt umber, burnt sienna, or muddy gray, and barely noticeable. However, modeling it is a real difference maker, primarily as it relates to dialing back the intensity of the white lettering.
-The thin, dark, vertical contrast at the rivet lines.
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit, the twenty percent effort, eighty percent impact steps. First up, the dulling ultradilute wash. If you want to delve into the hobby beyond being a casual recreationalist, and it’s a personal choice, you need to get comfortable with using an airbrush. If you don’t, you’ll be forever handcuffed, forever limited in how far you can take things. If you can use an electric toothbrush, you can use an airbrush.
The haze is applied as a very, very thin wash with an airbrush. Fill the paint cup about two-thirds full with Tamiya X-20 thinner. In this case, I’m going for a muddy gray tone (alternatives being burnt umber or burnt sienna). Dip a small paint brush handle in a bottle of Tamiya XF-84 Dark Iron (a totally disgusting and highly useful hue) to pick up a thin layer of paint and swirl it around in the thinner a bit until most of the paint you picked up is washed into the paint cup. Do this three times. With the wash now mixed in the cup, airbrush a white card to make sure the wash is barely noticeable. If it’s too thick, pour a bit out of the cup and add more thinner. Once you have the right consistency, coat the car in two or three light passes. Remember if the wash is too thin, no problem. You can bring the color up on future passes. If you make it too dark, sorry, you’re pretty much screwed. The bottom of the car, doors, and car ends are a bit darker. I made a darker wash of five drops of paint for these areas.
That’s it. This simple step will contribute a good eighty percent of the overall visual impact.
The trucks are easier. After masking off the treads, I apply several coats of Rustoleum Dark Gray Primer (rattle can). When that’s dry, give it a light puff or two with Rustoleum Earth Brown camo. Finally, I take a small, ratty brush and grind in Bragdon Enterprises’ “Weathered Brown” weathering powder.
The third and final “big ticket” step is cutting those hideous trip pins off of the couplers. They look awful, are very distracting, and serve no purpose. Although not super noticeable, I like to swap in Kadee #158 scale couplers (after cutting off the trip pin). On the Walthers Proto car in this example, it’s a very simple swap.
Good enough, let’s roll? Hit the brakes and putter?
Picking the right pace of progress is a critical part of the hobby that doesn’t get talked about enough. How fast you move will be dictated by how large your layout is, how far along you are with it, and what activities you enjoy. If your layout is medium to large, it makes sense to employ Tony Koester’s pragmatic “good enough” approach and declare the car “finished”. If your layout is smaller or almost done, going too quickly will essentially put you in the position of working yourself out of a job. In these situations, it makes sense to hit the brakes, enjoy the ride, and smell the roses. Move on to adding less noticeable details, not out of any drive to be hyper prototypical, but simply because doing so is fun.
Details
The details I’ll go over next are far less noticeable. Nonetheless, I like to sit down with a cold beer after work and putter away. For me, they are less about rivet counting and more about relaxing. All of my layouts are done, or mostly done, so I’m looking for ways to extend modeling time, not speed it up.
In no particular order, I added:
-Cut bars
-Air hoses
-A thinner brake wheel
-Painted the tack board and added dry transfer scraps to represent old waybills
-Added a few chalk mark details
These are the purchased detail parts I used. I’m not sure the actual brand is that crucial.
A) Kadee brake wheel. This is much thinner than the one on the model. B) Scale couplers. It’s crucial from an appearance standpoint that you trim the stock trip pin off. C) Cut bars D) Air hoses. Note that it’s important that you introduce a slight bend or droop to them. Many aftermarket hoses are totally straight, which is not a good look. E) Painted trucks. The stock trucks are very free rolling, which I like. Some modelers like to swap in trucks with a thinner/more prototypical tread. I may do that later.
A) I dry-brushed a medium gray on the tack boards and then rubbed some scraps of white dry transfer lettering on for the waybills.
B) Random chalk mark decals from Microscale
C) Notice in the prototype photo the contrast lines on the rivet rows. Representing them adds value. Take a razor-sharp black artist’s pencil, and using a straight edge, very, very lightly drag the pencil across the rivet heads. If you go too dark in this step its impossible to reverse.
D) The haze on these cars is subtly darker on the bottom of the cars. I made a slightly darker wash and made a few more airbrush passes to darken things up.
From time to time, it makes sense to take inventory of your situation and interests and prioritize accordingly. Larger layout or just getting started? Grab the low-hanging fruit and move on. Small layout? You need to look for things to slow you down, so don’t get done too soon. It’s not either/or. You can always do a blend that works for you. The point is to have a basic strategy, to work from a place of purposeful intent.
