The author cuts up small strips of paper (above) to make way- bills to attach to the tackboards. A tiny drop of cyanoacrylate is used to secure the waybill in place (above right). Once the wheels have been fully weathered, the author cleans the treads
with a with a wire brush mounted in a Dremel tool (below left). Be sure to wear eye protection when doing this. The finished truck has been dry brushed with grime and rust, dusted with chalks and the wheels have been installed (below right).
Some paints used to letter cars weather faster than the paint used on the car itself. In these cases, the letter- ing becomes slightly streaked down the car’s side, or otherwise compromised. To simulate this condition, I use a small brush with some plastic solvent cement. Like dry-brushing, load the brush then stroke it on some scrap un- til the bulk of the solvent is gone. Stroke the brush directly onto the car’s lettering, and immediately streak it down with that thumb of yours. Ran- domly attack only portions of the car’s lettering, leaving the reporting marks pretty much alone. Railroads tolerate a lot of weather damage and vandalism, but not to the reporting marks. Those are kept readable for day to day opera- tional reasons, and thus fairly well maintained. Reporting marks are usu- ally the initials of the railroad, and a car number. Those two factors make that specific car unique and trackable. This is how the road knows what’s in any given car, and where it is going.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
The scribbling and chalk marks on a car are not always graffiti, but things written on the carside by railroaders for informational purposes. You might well see a “track 4” or “house” written on the carside. That is not to preclude the occasional “kilroy was here” or “JBKING” or worse by railroad em- ployees and others. Use a very sharp white grease pencil to replicate these markings.
Remember those little scraps of pa- per we cut while waiting for the alcohol wash to flash off? Well, it’s time to at- tach these waybills to the tackboards. Tackboards are made of wood and were applied to steel cars so that switchmen would have a way to nail (tack) a way- bill to the car. Being wood, they weath- er faster than the steel carside and tend to be bare wood. I put out a dot of gray and a dot of black on a scrap of cardstock, and pull the two together with a small brush. Do not mix them too well into an even gray, but only slightly mix the two colors. Don’t fret if
the result is a streaked light, medium, dark gray as would be the wood itself, and then paint the tackboards with this streaky mess. They are usually on the doors and ends, but sometimes ad- jacent to the door. They were unneces- sary on wood cars for obvious reasons, so place the waybills somewhere near the door.
Using the point of a toothpick, apply a small dot of cyanoacrylate to the tackboard. There will be enough adhe- sive remaining on the toothpick to pick up the “waybill” and stab it onto the tackboard. These final details are far enough away from the normal opera- tional handling points to likely stay put during an operating session. Since it has been eleven years since we covered basic building materials, it might be a good time to review the ba- sics of wood, styrene, cardstock, and even plaster. The next few months may be old hat to some of the experienced builders, but I’ll try to keep the infor- mation fairly interesting.
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