Over the weekend, I tried some weathering techniques published in the April 2011 issue of Model Railroader. I'm not claiming any of these techniques as my own, because they aren't, but I do want to share how I weathered an Athearn covered hopper car. I did not take a photo of the car before I started, but you can find the Athearn stock photo of it here. I am also uploading these photos and others to a Facebook album, viewable here.
I started by airbrushing the car to be a little dirty. I wanted more rust than dirt, so I kept the dirt pretty light. I used Polly Scale Railroad Tie Brown, thinned 1 part paint to 9 parts isopropyl alcohol. This will give the car a very light coat of paint. Don't try to put all the dirt on all at once, it's best to do several thin layers of paint rather than one thick layer. It's a good idea to fade the paint before making it dirty. Do this by using a light gray or a white paint. I skipped this step since I was using a light colored car and I figured fading wouldn't have any affect, but looking back I wish I had done it because the lettering is not faded at all. It is also a good idea to bring the car back to your railroad room between coats of paint and see how it looks under railroad lighting. If you're anything like me, I was painting in a room with very different lighting than the railroad room. The lighting will affect how the car looks. Finally, when you're done painting, make sure you clean your airbrush. Any paint left over in the airbrush will gum it up, making it harder to paint next time. I was using an acrylic paint, so I filled the bottle with water and shot the whole bottle out of the airbrush to clean it. Use a paint thinner for enamel paints.
Next I put reflectors on the sides of the car. These became mandatory a few years ago, and they started showing up on railroad cars all over the place. There are very few cars now that do not have them, but they are still out there. Since they are pretty generic, I did not look up prototype photos to see what pattern they were placed on the real thing, because chances are they are all different anyway. I used Highball Graphics decals, and just arranged them in a uniform pattern across the car. The reason I did not do this first is because the car has a build date of 1990, and the reflectors would have been added much later. Most of the dirt on the car would not be on the reflectors, and I wanted them to look newer than the rest of the car.
Finally, I rusted the car. I wanted it to be a bit rusty from 20 years of use, but not so rusty that it is no longer recognizable. I achieved that by using burnt sienna oil paint. These paints are expensive, but you use so little of it that one tube will last you quite a while. I took a piece of wire and used it to spread paint along the top seam of the car and random spots on the side of the car. I let the paint dry for two hours and then came back to finish up. I took a paintbrush that fit between two of the exterior posts and dipped it in turpenoid, which is a paint thinner for oil paints. Starting at the top of the car, I pulled the color down the side of the car with the paintbrush. This streaks the rust in the same way that rain does on the real thing. I did this on all four sides of the car. It is possible to do this with the car standing up, but I would not recommend doing all four sides at once, because then you don't have any dry areas on the car to handle it with. Finally, I did the same thing on the roof. Keep in mind that the roof walks and the hatches don't get as must rust as the rest of the roof, because people walk on the walkways and the hatches get replaced as they wear out. I kept the rust in those areas lighter than on the rest of the roof, but I did put a little rust on them.
After letting the rust dry, I took a hobby knife and scraped off excess paint from small areas such as grab irons and posts and wheels. While heavy rust is realistic, globs of paint sticking out from the side of the car is not! After doing this, I sprayed the car with dullcoat to seal everything together and to get rid of the shiny sheen. Then I installed a pair of type E couplers from Sergent Engineering and put the car on the railroad. Here is a photo of the finished car:
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