Quick and dirty Canadian National Railways boxcar project



I stumbled across the prototype photo of a work service boxcar above and found that it was a perfect match for the True Line Trains 10'IH boxcar model.  I have quite a few of these cars and I had one that was a duplicate road number.



Plugging the original holes with styrene rod.  The rod is slightly larger than the hole so some solvent cement makes quick work of the rod
Redrilled hole locations for the ladders.  It looks better with the ladder remounted

One issue with the first runs of these cars were the side ladders were too far inboard of the ends.  I popped the ladders off and plugged the holes with styrene rod.  These were trimmed and sanded smooth.  I found that Vallejo Air 71.105 Brown or 71.084 Fire Red are close to the factory paint colour.  Once the car is weathered you can't see any difference in the paint.  These cars were so filthy that there is more dirt than paint on them.  

I stripped the road number and a few other incorrect (for this car) lettering areas on the model.  This was followed by a coat of Vallejo gloss varnish on areas that would be decaled.  

I used a set of CN maple leaf decals along with the road numbers from Black Cat Decals to get the car lettering as per the prototype photo.  I guessed that the opposite side of the car would be the same.  Since it is hard to find photos of both sides of run of the mill freight cars I'm probably safe in doing this.  I also added the ACI label from Microscale.  

Another coat of gloss varnish over the decals to seal them was applied and allowed to dry.  I sprayed a couple of layers of Tamiya TS-80 flat on the car.  Once this was dry I masked the areas of the car with fresh paint using various widths of Tamiya masking tape.  





The car was weathered with a mix of oil paints, various blacks along with raw and burnt umber, raw and burnt sienna as well as a few other browns.  Multiple washes followed an initial pin wash until I was satisfied with the result.  I did manage to get some oils under the masking tape so a bit of clean up was needed.  I also added some Kadee air hoses along with Kadee 158 couplers with the trip pins cut off along with some Vallejo Game Effects dry rust on the couplers.  The wheels had been weathered on a previous round of work so the car is ready to go to work with the maintenance crews on the Hudson Bay Railway.  

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