in my railroad experience, i would venture to say that gondolas got beat up more than any other equipment. sometimes the road number was almost obliterated and often had been gone over with chalk to make it legible. loading mill gons with hot steel burned the paint off and resulted in a lot of rust.
perhaps it is outside the scope of what you are doing but, gons got bent, dinged and gashed a lot. often the top rails were beat up and the sides were sometimes spread out.
don't forget to trash the inside and floor. bits of scrap metal, wood, and dirt or stone often littered the floors.
exceptions would be cars in assigned service such as hauling pipe. they were often treated more kindly by the people who loaded them.
be happy in your work, charlie
Ferrykid,
As Charlie,,has stated,,what the Gondola,was used for,would determine,how beat up and weathered it would be. Most buyers of used equipment,don't bother to paint it their color,,paint is expensive,,what they do is patch out the old owner's info and herald and apply their info on the patched out sections..They usually use a color for the patch work,similar to original paint color,,but really does not matter..There are a few articles in MR about patched out paint jobs,,,Cody Grivno did one on his site..
Cheers,
Frank
While beating up a gondola is fun remember a unsafe car can be rejected by the customer or rejected at interchange.
Again look to the prototype and you will find gons isn't as beat up as many think..
Examples.
http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
The degree of weathering is a personal choice, as to just how much, that is really up to you. Without actual pics of this particular piece, I would use others a some sort of guideline. Experiment w/ that "Instant weathering" it is quite easy to overdo it. The base color of the instant weathering doesn't always work for all colors. It is nothing more than over spraying "grime". There are quite a few other options to use that are a bit more reversable as you go. Artists acrylics, drybrushed and weathering powders are a good start. As mentioned, gons really got quite beat, I don't know if you plan on heating and distorting the sides, this can be tricky at best, soldering irons, heat guns to do this can destroy the car completely unless you have perfected a technique. To start, I dry brush some of the serious rust and grime, then "fog" the entire car w/ a wash of quite diluted paint that is close to a lighter version of the car's color to show fade and help obscure the crispness of the reporting marks. Additional dry brushing and streaking w/ powders to suit.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
zstripeFrrykid, Most buyers of used equipment,don't bother to paint it their color,,paint is expensive,,what they do is patch out the old owner's info and herald and apply their info on the patched out sections..They usually use a color for the patch work,similar to original paint color,,but really does not matter..There are a few articles in MR about patched out paint jobs,,,Cody Grivno did one on his site.. Cheers, Frank
Frrykid,
Most buyers of used equipment,don't bother to paint it their color,,paint is expensive,,what they do is patch out the old owner's info and herald and apply their info on the patched out sections..They usually use a color for the patch work,similar to original paint color,,but really does not matter..There are a few articles in MR about patched out paint jobs,,,Cody Grivno did one on his site..
bogp40 Experiment w/ that "Instant weathering" it is quite easy to overdo it.
Experiment w/ that "Instant weathering" it is quite easy to overdo it.
You must be referring to me about the ID,,since,I am the only one who used it,,,sorry!! At my age,typing and seeing,are two different things..
The "PROPER AMOUNT OF WEATHERING" is totally up to the individual. I would say that gondolas are used hard and generally show the abuse, so have at her. Stop, just before you feel you've over done it.
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
Here's a Proto gondola which I picked-up, partially assembled, from the "used" table at the LHS. After replacing the plastic grab irons with metal ones, I stripped off the paint and lettering applied by the former owner, and also the factory-applied lettering beneath that, then re-painted and re-lettered the car. Since the car had cost only a couple of bucks, I decided to try bulging some of the side sheets. To do this, I used a 200 watt soldering iron, holding it near the inside surface of the car's sides, but not touching the plastic. After a second or two, the plastic was softened enough to be pushed out, creating a bulge. Try to heat mostly the areas between the car's ribs, as those places are more easily pushed out by careless cranemen. You'll need to heat each area individually, then use a rounded tool to create the bulge - I used the handle of a suitably-sized screwdriver:
There are many methods to weather freight cars. This one got highly-diluted washes of PollyScale paint, followed by airbrushing with severely-diluted Floquil (90% thinner) applied with an airbrush. Artists pastels are also useful for weathering, although they weren't used on this car.
If you're modelling an empty car, you should know that not many gondolas are truly empty - except as mentioned previously, most have residue from previous loads, either the lading or the blocking and dunnage used to secure it. I used some real dirt in mine along with some planks and lumber scraps - like all of my open cars, the "load" is loose and can be dumped out if I want to add a load:
If this were your car, you'd still need to patch-paint it to obliterate the previous owner's roadname, reporting marks, and numbers. To do this, you can simply mask the car, leaving those areas to be painted exposed, then airbrush on your choice of colour. Another alternative is to airbrush a sheet of plain (clear) decal paper with that colour, then cut pieces from the sheet to use as patches over the appropriate areas. In either case, you'd then simply apply the appropriate decals or dry transfer lettering for the new owner.
I'm modelling the mid-to-late '30s, and have no patched cars. However, most of my rolling stock does have re-weigh data, and it's applied in several ways...the two mentioned above and by masking-off portions of the lettering before weathering, then removing the tape to reveal what appears as a freshly-painted patch with newly-applied stencilling. Here are a few examples of these methods, although I don't recall which car represents which method.
Wayne