CN OCS single sheath boxcar

A well weathered CN 1929 boxcar in Winnipeg, on its way to the Winnipeg Railway Museum circa 1995; if only I had the foresight to measure the brake gear when I had the chance...

I have wrapped up a long dormant boxcar project.  While digging through my stash of freight cars I found a Kaslo Shops Distributing Canadian National 40 foot 1929 single sheath boxcar in a box, assembled (not sure if it was me or something I bought at a train show)  but unpainted.  I decided to remedy that situation.  


Side view of the brake rigging - I need to find a museum with one of these cars to measure and photograph!

Before I got too far I had to address an issue with the brake rigging. On the prototype there was a clevis, crank, chain and anchor set up that I have never seen done in model form. I finally came across a few prototype slides in my collection with clear enough views of this arrangement to make an attempt at representing it. An Intermountain part along with some scratch built bits and some 42 link/inch chain gave me the look I'm aiming for. 

the set up until I can find better photos and drawings for future builds

Brake rigging for the boxcar - it is quite visible so I wanted to try and capture the appearance

I also swapped out the Tichy ladders for some Kaslo etched ladders as the rungs are much finer and closer to scale than the Tichy ones. I had to shorten the ladder height to fit the car, and I used the cut off portion of the ladder to represent the metal strapping used under the wood corner platforms.



I wanted to represent a work service car that has not seen a paint shop in a long time, with peeling paint and faded lettering. To do this I used Vallejo chipping fluid to get the peeling paint effect. I painted the car with grey Tamiya fine surface primer and then painted individual boards various shades of black and grey. This was followed by applying the chipping fluid with a micro brush, basically drybrushing on the chipping fluid. Once it was dry I painted the car with a Vallejo Air mix (2 parts 71.105 1 part 71.038) to get the CN red #11. Once this was dry but not cured (about 1-1.5 hours) I started removing the red #11. I wetted the entire car and started scrubbing the paint with microbrushes and toothpicks to remove the paint and expose the grey and black painted boards. This method will only work if the top coat is acrylic paint. 



Once I was happy with the paint I applied gloss to areas to be decaled and used Black Cat CN 1929 40ft boxcar decals. I sanded some of the decals to get weathered car data on the car similar to the weathered boards. I sealed the car with Vallejo Ultra Matt finish. I finished up with oil paint washes to blend everything together. There were cars like this one littered across the CN system on forgotten back tracks and working their last years in OCS service. 




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