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I'm calling this pair of boxcars finished at this point. I tried to do some water streaking using heavily water down inks and it looks okay. I did the streaking and then I came back with some lighter dust to try and lighten up the effect a bit. Overall pretty good, I think the next set will be better. I received the new dry transfers from Clover House today; Rio Grande Southern, Denver & Rio Grande Western and the Colorado and Northwestern. So I just need enough boxcars to use them all! I have two here that are ready to go so I need to acquire one more. I may go ahead and use the two here for the C&N since I have been working on those decals. I also discovered today that those ladders on the sides aren't cast on, they are pinned off so I can take them off. I may go ahead and remove them from anymore Bachmann boxcars that I get. Those ladders will help the CC and DSP&P boxcars stand out a bit more.

The streaking effect is a little harsh at this point

Added some additional dusting and call it done

DSP&P calling this one done as well

Finally getting to the part that I really enjoy, weathering! I haven't done boxcars in a long time and the last ones I did were for my "Patch" layout, steel with rust. That's not quite going to cut it this time around, rust doesn't show up much on wood. So time to experiment a bit and see what I can do with something that has a lot more wood siding to work with. I also found my Bragdon weathering powders so I worked with those a little bit on this one as well. The Bragdon powders are loose and I found them very hard to control so I went back to the Pan Pastels, I find them much easier to work with. I can see a couple of areas where I might go in with the Bragdon powders to touch some things up.

Here is how far I got this evening

I started off with wheels again. These are for all the freight cars and cabooses that I painted with the Tru-Scale paint a couple of weeks ago.

Look pretty good. Probably spent to much time on these considering how hard they are to see under the car.

This is how the Colorado Central box car started out

After painting and dry transfers (Clover House, New Creations)

A quick application of Burnt Sienna ink from Liquitex

Applied the first coat of Pan Pastel, this is the dark base

This is after the application of the second and lighter color of Pan Pastel

This is the car the Denver, South Park & Pacific started from

After paint and dry transfers (Clover House, New Creations)

The application of Burnt Sienna Liquitex Ink

A darker grey applied to the roof for soot

First application of the darker Pan Pastel

Second lighter application of Pan Pastel

So this is were I got, one more evening's work should finish these off.

I received some new decal paper to try out today so I tried to get back on track making C&N decals. I can't seem to get the long Switzerland Trail logo right so I decided to set that little project aside again. However, I stumbled across some dry transfers for the Colorado Central and the Denver, South Park & Pacific. These are from the New Creations line from Clover House. These aren't exactly prototypical, the designer decided to utilize the company logos as part of the design. Since this falls in line with my proto-freelancing concept I figured I would go ahead and sacrifice a couple of boxcars and use these up. Mostly because I really want to get back and weather something!

Its been a long time since I used dry transfers but I think these came out pretty good. Now time to get ready for some weathering!

The Georgetown Loop logo is okay, it does add a nice bit of character.

I really like the South Park logo. I think it looks very sharp

Although my town of Calamity hasn't seen a lot of work lately I have been keeping my eye out for good deals on rolling stock for the railroad portion. For those that haven't been following along I have abandoned my original idea of using S Scale, just do to the lack of equipment available and instead I am using On30. It has the right "feel" because of its narrow gauge proportions even though I consider 1/48th scale to be much to big for 28mm miniatures. I have been able to find some pretty good deals on Ebay and over the last month I have been able to pick up a box car and stock car. I would like to get at least 3-4 more box cars and another stock car so I'll keep my eyes peeled. I'm still looking for reasonably priced steam locomotives as well. I may have to bit the bullet on those. In the meantime I have decided that when I get my turn of the century railroad back up and running I'll be re-doing it in On30 rather than HO so everything can serve double duty as my Colorado and Northwestern RR.

Here are the latest acquisitions.

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.

So yes, my trains are suffering as well. Currently one half of the ATSF Patch district has track layed but not wired. I need to figure out a way to keep the two hollow core doors tightly together. I was making good progress on rolling stock but I ran out of the Sergeant couplers that I was using. However, just last week a box  full of couplers arrived so I have no more excuses about not getting the entire fleet finished up. Its not like I have hundreds of cars, its more like 10 - 12. Oh and I would have swore that the two beer cars I got from Exact Rail were 50' and the are actually something over 60'. I'll probably just go ahead and sell those off or trade them.  I have five ATSF Reefers that need to be weathered as well as the two CF7s. I have four background building kits to get me started on the rear portion of the layout and a lot of grandiose plans in my head. Once the layout is up and in place and the track thoroughly tested things should move right along. Unfortunately I have way to many hobbies and I can't seem to give any of them up.

The other layout is in mothballs at the moment. That is my turn of the century Colorado and Northwestern RR. I'm unhappy with the track design so it came down for the time being so that it doesn't frustrate me. There are about 30 box cars and 20 short gondola cars for that along with 3 2-8-0 (Consolidation), 1 2-6-0 (Mogul) and a two truck Heisler (that really should be a three truck Climax but that was way outside of my price range). I also need to acquire a 2 truck Shay but I'll see how I feel about that.