The color of the roof and the underside of the ACL caboose I'm assembly is black. Should the roof be a semi-gloss black and the underside a flat black?
Thanks for the help...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
If it's a wood caboose, the roof would probably be tarpaper or something similar, so I would think a flat black would be best. Keep in mind too that regardless of how it started, if it was used behind steam engines, the roof would build up coal soot over time. (Powdered charcoal is good at mimicking that effect, plus you can seal it in with a spray of flat finish and it doesn't dissolve like chalk weathering does.)
Hi Stix,
Yea, forgot to mention that it's a wood caboose. Although I figured that painted roofs and roof walks would probably weather pretty quickly, I hadn't considered that soot would also play a factor in dulling the color.
Thanks for the suggestions...
Keep in mind it often wouldn't be painted wood, it would be wood covered with tarpaper or something similar. Although this pic shows restorers using modern materials, it's the same general idea (although note they're working on the cupola roof; on the main body's roof, the tarpaper would be rolled out the long way, not cross-wise.)
https://railtown1897.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/april-28-148.jpg
You might have track down more info on the particular caboose you're modelling to determine for sure.
Thanks, Stix. So, with a rolled roof on a caboose...would the seams butt together, or overlap?
The rolled roofs on a few houses I've modeled had overlapping joints. The kit has the top layer as one piece that's laid over the curved roof. Seems like that would be kind of a challenge to apply to a real caboose with a roof walk and have it NOT leak.
Hard to find good prototype pictures, but this model article has some good pics of how it should look:
http://tuscarorarailroad.blogspot.com/2010/09/story-of-east-broad-top-caboose-4.html
BTW wood passenger cars - and I believe even at least some heavyweights - would have had similar roofing.
Are you modeling/kitbashing one?
Modeling - It's an American Model Builders (AMB) laser kit (#859)...
So outside of NYC, do you like the ACL as well?
Intermountain F3A/B's in Purple/Silver and some freight cars would go great with that caboose.
ATSFGuy,
It's for a friend of mine who models the ACL & SCL. (See other thread: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/264584.aspx)
Its been a fun but slow project so far and the detail information I'm interested in has been hard to come by. AMB also makes a NYC caboose. So, whenever I finish the ACL caboose I'll have plenty of experience to draw from should I decide to tackle the NYC version.