TRACK TALK LIVE: November 2019

Hello, welcome to Track Talk Live, my name is Leah and as always, I am here with Doug Hodgdon, known as Mr. Clickity affectionately by all of us. But today, I do have a special guest here, it is Bob Chooch Rivard, and he is a well-published HO Soo Line modeler, from right here in Minneapolis. So he's planning to demonstrate an assortment of projects dealing with car and locomotive painting and weathering, welcome Chooch. Hi Leah, nice to meet you.

You too, Doug, Nice to meet you Bob. I've known Doug for many years, we've known each other. We're gonna get into a lot of detail with them a little bit later, but before we dig into the demonstrations and the Q&A's, I have a little bit of an announcement to share. If you watched with us the last time through, you've already heard this, but a big reminder, we've got a nine day tour in England coming up with the Model Railroad Academy. It's March 15th to the 23rd in the year 2020, so coming up before you know it, don't miss your chance to join Doug on a once in a lifetime experience, combining Petrous Sea sightseeing, a visit to the Pendon Model Railway Museum, specialized tours and the opportunity to experience it all with your fellow Model Railroad enthusiasts.

For more information, you can click the banner underneath the video or the link in the description, and join us for that fantastic trip coming up in March. Before we get into the Q&A's, I did wanna give Chooch a little moment to introduce all of us to him, and what you've been up to and what brings you here? Well, Doug and I have been talking about this for a while, It's like this does sound like a fun idea. So to me, this is what it's all about is sharing your passion, your hobby. And I've been doing this for many years.

Social media, there's nothing better than being able to share my techniques with people will ask questions, I'll post things and there's a lot of cool sites. There's actually a weathered model train car site, and it's fun to share information. I'm always learning something myself it seems like, so hopefully I can have some fun here with you guys and share some of my techniques that I've learned through the years for a weathering. Like a Soo Line boxcar for instance, a big white billboard on the side, it's really a neat thing to show weathering patterns and I've always loved the Soo Line, I've grown up by the Soo Line, and for many years I would get on my bike and go watch the Soo Line come up the hill and see these big white locomotives with the big S-O-O on the side and I was just captured by that. Well that's it, tell us about your childhood, how you got interested.

And just living by the Soo Line, and hearing the trains coming out of the big shore, it's like, I've gotta go up and see. My friends of course, we'd be wanting to play football on the street and stuff, but it's like, no, I want to go up and see this train because it's gonna be neat. It's making a lot of noise and I want to see what's going on. And I would, I'd ride my bike up there. And now to this day, I do the same thing.

I live by the tracks. I grew up watching trains on, and I'm still fascinated watching these big trains being moved by the Canadian Pacific, it's kinda neat. That's what I tell people when they ask me and I say, well, to me the trains were the most exciting thing happening in St. Louis Park when I was a kid. Right?

But I was like you, I was just a few blocks from the track. It's not like years ago when I would be wanting to take photos of cars and engines to try to model them. Thankfully, I've done that through the years. An example is this boxcar. And if we want, we can get a shot of that.

That would be kind of cool. I'll show you this project here, for example, I took this shot like around 1980, yup. Oh, that's perfect you guys, look at that. Back in the control room. And Atlas came out with this same car a couple of years ago, and this is a shot I took around 1980 while Atlas comes out with the same exact number, which if you're a modeler, that that's a big deal.

That means I don't have to change the number. So this car is from the factory is dead on. It matches my photo. Also I had to do early you guys, is replace the roof to make it a correct roof. Other than that-- If you see from the picture, it has a galvanized roof.

Yes. And original. Yep the original, you can see that, that gray roof. I used the light gray to paint my roof to capture a galvanized... It basically looks like gray paint.

That's what a galvanized roof would look like. So yeah. Pretty cool stuff. We're going to dig in a little bit more to send demonstrations in a moment, but first Doug, what have you been up to? Well, I just wanted to mention that I went to the past month, I went to the Chicago land RPM convention, I really talk up these conventions 'cause it's modelers for the best modelers from all over the country and actually literally the world, the company conventions.

And I highly recommend them. So you'll have to wait another 11 months til the next Chicago Land convention. But I just wanted to say that as we go down the road here and we're seeing how busy Bob gets to the next show or so we'll actually have pictures of models from there. Fantastic. And then I did not go to the Milwaukee Train Fest, but I wanted everybody to know about it.

Cause that's a really good show too, at the fairgrounds in Milwaukee. Yeah, just too much going on. I was gone so much already, but anyway that's a good shot out for Train Fest. And then just a quickie thing. I've got my new NMRA calendar in the mail this week, and NMRA is a great organization and I recommend it.

So I just thought I'd hold up this calendar and give a little promo but I recommend joining NMRA. Perfect. That's my news. And I do have some models, we can talk about those later. I got some projects too.

Absolutely, I will be keeping an eye on your questions as they come in. Please feel free to add them to the chat box. We have a jam packed hour of content, I'm sure. So I'll slide in anything that's specific to a demonstration that's being talked about in live time as best I can, but otherwise we'll get to as many questions as possible. I guess we can start right away, if we want to take field one off the back.

Bottle up front here. You guys have had this empty track and maybe I'll bring something to put on your empty track. And I figured Doug would like this. This is what's in my backyard. As if I don't have enough in my basement.

This is the hobby that gets me out of the basement in the nice summer months, for about three months. And I'm out in my backyard enjoying the outdoor trains. This is one of those Revell models, 125th scale. And it's the kind of when you were a kid, you put the car together. The first part you put together as part one of the engine, right?

Of the motor, it's all pieces. And my friend Marith Kona came up with the exact Caterpillar D8 paint. So that's the exact color of yellow they would have used on there. And it makes a great flat car load, for G scale. So that just goes to show that even when you're in model railroading, sometimes you build things other than railroad equipment.

Exactly. Yes, exactly. It crosses hobbies, two hobbies will cross, yes. Perfect. Well, let me throw in one quick question, just to get us started.

This comes from Bruce. Bruce is asking what is the best way to rust a tanker? A tanker, is Bruce dock about a tank car? Probably. I would assume so, yes.

Boy yes, there's a lot of different... It depends how heavily you want to duplicate the rust. I've done so many articles through the years. That's one of the things I have done is showing weathering especially if it's a white tank car, boy there's nothing better than an old aged tank car to show rust patterns. You use different products.

Yes. You use the water-based, oil based, weathering powders. Yep, it just depends how much rust and what, if you're trying to duplicate rust patches, which is what I'm gonna try to show, you could actually use these techniques on a tank car. Apply for any kind of a car, really. Yes.

So in fact, I'm gonna start here. You might be able to use the same techniques on a tank car. So here we go. Here's a box car that is available from Red Caboose, and it's a kid I happened to have laying around for years in the box and I thought, oh this will be perfect to bring to Track Talk and talk about it with you guys. So this is already painted and weathered from the manufacturer.

The first thing I did was to do the roof. So I have a technique where I like to simulate rust patterns on a roof. And a lot of box cars the paint peels on a roof, and to duplicate that effect, what I did is I painted a gray primer under this roof and then painted the base color, which is basically an oxide red. So that's what's on the roof covering this primer. So if things go well, basically just regular scotch tape should take the rest of the paint off and expose these patches of the metal roof underneath.

And if nothing else, I've got a backup plan here. This is packaging tape. So it's basically nothing more than just pressing it down. And you're just gonna yank it up. And then yanking it up.

There's nothing scientific about it. You can actually tell, that that is actually taking some of the paint off. Giving it a little texture. Yes. And the harder you press, of course it's gonna want to remove more of that oxide paint.

That's the real common thing you see too on real cars, is that kind of funny, the way that the paint comes off. Another method I use is sometimes some lacquer thinner. I go through a lot of Q-tips for my weathering. Ah, yes. See how that's exposing my...

That underneath. Yup. We'll take our tape off here. And that's gonna simulate the patches of paint flaking off of the metal roof. Do you ever use that method where people put salt?

Yes, I have used that, I did. Frank Jordan gave me a car a few years ago, and I weathered the roof using that exact method. Now you see how that all that paint is coming off? This is my backup plan using the paint thinner, and the lacquer thinner. Now you want to use this sparingly, the lacquer, you don't want to get it on the sides of the car, because it will eat into the...

Yup that funny spotty look. Yup. So there's that. And there's a few more patches we're going to do here. I've done this technique so many years and done the tape, and if one technique doesn't work that well, he can always go into a different backup plan.

And that's what I'm doing here. I have little jars of just about everything. I have lacquer thinner and turpentine... Alcohol. Yeah, the other thinner I like to use is a product called Turpenoid.

You get that in artist's supply stores. And it's odorless paint thinner. So it does not, like I said, it does not have the order that most so-- Kind of an oil base, but they take out the smell out of the regular turpentine. Here I have some artists oil paints, burnt sienna, raw umbers. They're great for weathering colors.

So here, we're just going to put this here for a second. I'm gonna dab a few colors on here. There's more of a black color. I'm just dabbing this on here. Now, as you can see, there's nothing too scientific about this for making rust blotches on a roof, right?

Right. It's nothing. You want to get it on there first, using your brush technique. And then using a little more thinner, and see how it's just flowing along there, along the weld seams and... Folks, if you have any comments while Bob's doing this be sure and send them-- I was gonna say while we're finishing up some of the work on the top, let's go into the next question.

Either of you can take this, if you're feeling up to it. We have a guest that asks what code of HO track is the best? And also what kind of track cleaner do you recommend? Is that for me, you want me to answer that one? Or Bob can-- Go ahead Doug.

Well, you know, code 83 is probably the most popular in HO now but when I did my HO layout, as you know, from previous shows, I'm kind of a stickler on scale, real size. And so I used code 70, because I was modeling a short line. So I used code 70 real for my main line, and then code 55 for sightings because real railroads wouldn't use the same size rail and everything had just depending on the use, in the main line, of course it had the heavier rail. So code 83 is probably the most popular. It also depends on whether you're handling the track, or you're buying ready-made track.

So there's a lot of variables there. And as far as cleaning the track goes, you can clean it by hand if you have a small layout. If you have a big layout with areas that are hard to get to, you might want to have some kind of a track cleaning car. You can buy cars that have an abrasive block on them. Or you can buy Tony's Train Exchange sells what's called a clean machine, which is basically, like a brass tank car body with a little nil valve in it, to allow your clean fluid to drip down into a pad.

And I use, to get the oil off, I use a lacquer thinner, but you're just doing various slight little drips. So it doesn't get the whole room stinky from lacquer thinner, but it just enough to get the rail clean. So if your rail is real dirty, I'd use a liquid cleaner. If it's bad then you have to use some kind of an abrasive block. I've actually just used three and foam sanding blocks.

Oh, which reminds me, by the way, I have to have an update from the last show. And I forgot to mention, a guy sent a question in last time about a G scale track cleaning car, LGB. And I failed to mention as my fault, it fails to mention that you could contact Only Trains, and they sell the actual pads that go on that LGB car. So that would be onlytrains.com. We have some people watching a lot of the hand movements and things that you're doing for the technique.

I'm wondering if maybe you can slide a little bit, so that we can see more of your hand technique. The strokes that you're doing, the paint. And would you guys mind in the control room, this shot I have up on my computer. This is a great example of a photo I took in the late 80s. It's a little out of my modeling era.

I model 77, but it's a nice example of weathering patterns on a Soo Line boxcar. So I thought that this would be a perfect boxcar to show you guys some of these rust blotches you see on the Soo in the line lettering, I'm basically just taking these artists oil paints here. It's a burnt Sienna. Raw umber is one of the colors I like to use. As you can see I'm just putting these blotches on here, trying to simulate what I'm seeing in my photo.

There's nothing more inspiring to me than a prototype photo. Seeing that on the lettering, on the real car, how those just blotches right on the white lettering. You can see the pattern that where the door has been opened on this car in particular, right? So I'm gonna put a couple of blotches. With scrape on the car.

So I'm just applying a few blotches along, kind of what I'm seeing there. You don't have to be real scientific. Let's try to go with that for a second. And then I'm gonna show you guys. No.

Different brush. No this is a fan brush, and now I'm going to take this. These weathering blotches is as on the prototype, you can see some bleeding. Now what this what should do is simulate that effect. You see how that's...

Go very lightly. Very lightly, and it's dragging that paint down much as how you're seeing on that prototype shot. Those blotches look so good. They look just like the real car. That's what I'm trying to do.

And where the door has been sliding on those marks, we could just use that fan brush, and do something like this. That's one thing, even when you're weathering, you want to think about what would happen to a real car. Anytime you have the car outside, of course you're gonna have things that are running downward. If the cars in the rain, or things washing down or in the case of the door, that's the sideways scratch because of the motion of the door opening. Another technique I like to use for one of the things to me is weathering on freight car trucks.

I got an old 40 foot box car Doug, as you well know, years of one of the weathering patterns I see is on the sides of the wheels, gunky, gritty, black grease. I mean, these things are black. So what I'm gonna show you here, as you can seE on my model, I've already pre weathered my trucks. So, the side frames and the wheels, already have the weathering applied. I got my truck, my wheels have that gunky black, almost it just flat black is what I...

So let me show you here real quick, my first step here. So down here, you guys, I have this, this is just some paint, cheap paint. I bought some flat paint, Rust-Oleum. And I'm just gonna-- What color is that? This is flat black.

What I'm gonna do is take my... Well, they're certainly not that shot. We do a quick question, slide another question into. Keep going Bob, you'll be okay. All right, go ahead.

Alfredo on Facebook, hi Alfredo, is wondering where he can purchase a complete collection of trains. Well, you know, it depends on what you're looking for. If he's looking for new or used. I mean, there's a lot of obviously Hobbie shops and train dealers that sell new train sets. Or if you're looking for something antique, or you save a little money, you can go to say eBay or Train Shows.

Oh, that would be a good way. For people that are selling trains. So, yeah, there's a lot of variables there, and depending on what you're looking for and how much money you wanna spend, of course. Amazon, another one. You can look on Amazon and see what what's out there.

And we have a similar question just to tag on, from Stefan since Yardbird is seemingly out of action. Where can a person go to find replacement motors for an older man to a steam locomotive? I would recommend Northwest Shortline and they've been a staple in the Model Railroad hoppie for ever really, I think since I was a kid, so they really know their stuff, and they've just converted over to new ownership, but it's one of the employees that took it over and always was a family business. So it was the guy and his wife that ran it before, and others, one of the ex-employees and his wife have taken over ownership. And they have all sorts of motors and of course with a man too, had originally had the old open frame motor.

You probably want a better quality motor, than what would have come with it originally. So you can buy a canned motors from Northwest short-line. They come in and millimeter sizes. So you just measure what would fit inside of the boiler of your locomotive, and you attach them down. They're round, you can just sit them into the locomotive frame with a gob of silicone, just put some silicone in there.

And then the the motor just sits in there and it kind of the bit the silicone, and it cushions the motor. It's a sound ending thing. It's great in all kinds of ways. So try Northwest Short Line. Awesome.

Hopefully that's a good place to get started for some of those searches. I see that we're moving on to some more weathering over here. Real quick you guys, another thing I want to point out. So the sides of my wheels, I painted with the flat black spray paint, to achieve that gritty black gunky look, I've got some pastel that I used a knife, and I scraped the shavings off to make a powder in this little jar here. So I'm going to take that powder now and put it right on my wet painted wheels.

And that'll help get that black gunky, really looks gritty like there's sand against us from years of grease on those brakes. We've seen that the combination of grease and mud all kick together, and it almost has a stucco look to it. When you look at it real close, it's just the mud and probably gravel. I wanna hold up those cans of paint you're using too at some point to show the people what you were using. And of course at home, of course, you use in a well ventilated areas you can tell.

But this is just some Rust-Oleum, absolute ultra flat. That's what you want to see. You want real flat looking paint. And now the side frames, I've taken some of my weathering powders, Aim. It makes them nice weathering powders.

There's a light rust. Hold that down so the camera can see it. All right, I'll put it right here. There's one called Delta Dirt. That's a nice AIM powder, Delta Dirt is fantastic.

Grimy black. Is a good quality, and that's the one that has the powder glue mixed in right with it. So you can just rub it in. And it's very pigments. So people will ask, do you have to overspray it?

Or it's like, I generally don't. It's hard to get off even when I want to get it off, accidentally put it on areas and I want to try to get it off. Now here, I'm putting some, I've got a little container that I've put just a mix of different types of powders from my sheets of paper as you can tell, you can get a lot of powder. And so now I'm putting some powders on the frames I'm using like a rust. This gives it a little more of a contrasty look, as you can see on my prototype shot of that Soo Line box boxcar, the side frames are a little bit lighter looking, than the a wheel sides.

So I'm just using a little bit of a rust, the lighter color rust powders on here. And let me put that back for a second. I'm going to take my black powder, my ultra powdered from the pastel that I've shaved off and made into a powder. And I'm just putting that under the sides of the wheels here. I know you're using that same fan brush from early.

Yes, and that's fine. Yep, that's that works fine for that. And there's that black powder and picking up, putting it on the side frames of the sides of the wheels. Okay now, when I'm happy with the results, I'll just snap my wheels back in. Getting a good shot of that north end.

We got another question that just came through. So while you're putting that together, we've got a question from a guest. What is the best brand of DCHO trains? That's a very good question. There are so many, and actually, they call them DC, which is maybe kind of an older term, because now most everything is DCC, but people would use DC as a comparison to the real early trains, which were AC.

So anyway, you know, I would get a good quality manufacturer, locomotive cars. I mean, regards Bob. We were just talking about that before we went on how I was trying to re-motor one of my older engines and using the Atlas. Atlas years ago made a fantastic, the GP seven. They made there with their Jeep sevens, their RS 11 drives.

It's a company called Cato, and they made the motors for the Atlas motor engines. And it's like, it's ultra smooth, ultra great running, Aether, Genesis. They're fantastic running engines. You want to have a very good running engine to start with, if you're going to put DCC in an engine, yeah, you ant to have a really nice, smooth running engine. Mainly I think what I would say is, if you're gonna to be in the hobby long-term stay away from those trains.

Like the type of trains you'd buy in a toy store, they're not really made to last very well, but if you're going to be a serious model railroader, you want to spend a fair amount of money and get something, get a good quality. Life like, the old lifelike, which is, well if there's now the proto 2000s, they have pretty good motors now in them and very smooth running. Like I said, Aether Genesis. I think I can do too is that I recommend to people is, if you have a club in your area, go to the club and see what they're doing, and ask us some questions that with those folks about what they think has been popular with them, because on a club, I mean, if you're running a club you put a lot of miles on your equipment. So generally speaking, you want to have something that's really good.

Gonna last for a while. Good quality, so.. We're moving on to a different box here. Now this box car, this other box car, this has the galvanized roof. So I'm going to simulate some of the weathering patterns you would see along the a weld seams of the roof.

So I'm going to pick up some of this, some of these artists oils, and I'm just dab. As you can tell, I'm dabbing this paint on. It's nothing too scientific. Once again, I'm gonna pick up the burnt sienna, the darker colors, artists oil paints. They're fantastic for doing this technique.

So I'm gonna put a couple of blotches here and there. And when you're sliding that paint on, is there any way for you to slide your right hand over that brush can be visible as well? Without messing with your technique too much. Ooh, there it is. Excellent.

Bob, sometimes if you let that dry a little bit before you do the brush technique? You can let it dry. I have locomotives that I've done 30 years ago and geez, I have too much weathering on this and I'll use my Q-tip, and some lacquer thinner and I'll cut it with some Terpenoid, the turpentine. And I'll remove weathering that using that method. It works very well.

No, these are artists oils. I'll go through 30 Q-tips on a project getting old weathering off, these are artists oils. Yes, and in the product, like I say it's called a Terpenoid, and it's an odorless paint thinner. Those artists oil was over at Michael's is an example, you know, craft stars. And I can vouch it is odorless.

I'm not noticing any-- What we're smelling is the Rust-Oleum. This spray paint is lingering. Let me grab another one of my Q-tips here, here I am going in front of you. I'm going to pick up my terpenoid. Now, one of the neat things about this technique is when you put the terpenoid on there, you'll start getting a really neat effect with the paint.

The thinner will start blending with the paint itself. Oh, there it is, yeah. Then Bob, you're talking about using a mixture of techniques. So you might use like, say it goes, the one thing I talk about is you don't want to do the same technique on every car because, these cars are all over the country-- And not all look the same. Different shades.

You might use like say a water base. I use water, but-- You can mix water base when you're weathering a roof. That's very common. Thin it with alcohol, that's what I do. So, and then of course you also have the weathering powders.

Yup, I like to finish off using the weathering powders. Today I'll be using... I can use mostly the powders because I don't have my airbrush here of course. Yeah, we'll have to do that another day. We'll get the airbrush going.

Yes, we've had some questions about airbrushing techniques in the past. So again, keep your questions coming as we keep on working through all of these demonstrations, I'll be feeding them through. Still working with the terpenoid, as of right now. I'm going back to my other box car roof for a second, because we were talking about the powders. And so I'm going to take some of my Delta dirt here, powders, and I'm going to, yep.

A-I-M, AIM powders. Make sure people know what we're using here. And then you also have pan pastels here. And pan pastels is a good, a good weathering powder. And you have a colored pencils.

The other thing is like rust color pencils for-- Yes. I'm glad you reminded me about those, Doug. because as you can see on that boxcar, you can see the rivets are highlighted and I was gonna use my pencil for that. Well, Edgar's got a good question coming in here. Edgar noticed that you did not clean off the bearing end of the axles or the wheel tread.

Will it come off on the track to interfere with the electrical current? That's a very good question. I don't worry about that, but you can clean them. He's probably talking about the tread of the wheel. Yeah, it looks like the contact he's concerned with.

And especially with the locomotives and when I weather it locomotive, the powders, especially with DCC. I'll clean the wheels and run them on a paper towel on a piece of track. And use the various products you can get for cleaning. Goo, was it called? I think it's Goo Gone.

Goo Gone Yup, and that that's good for cleaning the wheel treads. And you know what I do sometimes I take a very small flat blade screwdriver, and then just wrap a little piece of Kleenex around or something light. And then you can use that as almost like a little putty knife, and go around the tread of the wheel. Take out what you don't need. Yeah, so we're doing this a little bit quick.

The actual tips you could clean off too, just to make sure. Now I'm using you guys, I'm gonna pick up some of my Delta Dirt, because this car has some powder dirt, some dirt on the sides here. So I'm just going to try to simulate that, I've got dabbing some, as you can tell on the roof. And the box car ends are notorious for showing heavy weathering. Now what era of boxcar would this be Bob?

Now that's a 40 foot cars was probably probably a-- Probably built in the 40s. Built in the 40s, but you have the roof walk is... The roof walk has been removed. I drilled a little L grab iron on the end here, because when they remove the roof walk, they'll take the ladders off of the call it the B end, or the A end then the B end with the brake wheel, they'll have the ladders will still be to the height of the boxcar roof, so they can access the brake wheel. What year was that when they started taking roof walks off?

I want to say in the early 70s. Yeah, that's when you started to see roof walks disappear from box cars. 'Cause they were not allowed to walk on the roofs anymore. Yeah, because I'm modeling the early to mid 50s and everything I have has roof walks. I have cars, steel cars of that vintage, would have been more or less new cars.

Right? Your have your June 1950, I believe. Yeah, I'm trying to backdate a little bit, but they say that in the early 50s, I should have probably about half wood cars and half steel cars. And I have way too many steel cars now. So I got to back it up a little bit.

In fact that's why I got the silver car sitting right out here because I'm gonna explain what I'm doing to that. But this is a wood car that I got off eBay. Oh, well, do you want to get into that before we do our next question? I can, no. I've mentioned this before, but you know, SKL it's tough to find personally anything in this scale.

And this is a car made by a company called S-Helper. And it's actually a union Pacific maintenance away car. And it's silver, which is the way that UP had them. And I don't need a silver maintenance way car, but it has a minimum of lettering. And what I'm planning on doing is stripping this car, we've talked about the scale code to rinse away paint strippers, non-toxic paint stripper.

So I thought I'd use that on this car, just to show what you can do to strip it. I want to paint it a boxcar red or doing it Southern Pacific, but this S-Helper company did all the details all the grand buyers and everything are on here. The difference is that they sell the car with a template, wheel sets and couplers. And so if you can see that with this camera, see the-- Do you want me to hold it over into the other camera while you are talking? Yeah, just looking at the bottom side you can see it.

It's kind of a crossover car. So you can use it for either scale or a template. And of course I'm doing proto 64. So I have to change the wheel sets. And then of course see the big American flyer style couplers.

And so I have to change out over my couplers. It'll be Kadee body mode. And then I'll put, actually the trucks are good on this car. They're sprung Andrew's trucks so I'll keep the truck's side frame, but then put the proto 64 wheels in there, which hey, by the way I buy from Northwest Shortline. Doug, you want me to throw some weather in on your box here?

As long as it's here, there we go. Let me throw a little weather on there for you. Look at that. It's not bad, they're nice detailed trucks. I always do a thing with using that, the wash way.

'Cause I've had that originally, the paint stripper stuff from scale code 2, because it's not toxic and it works really well. And what I would use is use one of those bread, like a bread tin for making a loaf of bread? Oh, yes. And you can put the fluid in there, and then just basically dropped the car and you can take, you don't want to be too harsh with it but you can take something, an old toothbrush and kind of scrub it if need be. But these are great cars.

And so on the future shows here, I will be showing you how that works. I just got this car about two days ago. Ooh, brand new. No, off E-bay. Now this is a car I also got off of eBay, and I think I mentioned this last time.

This is what's called, I guess Bob can hold that up too. This is called the Milwaukee road, peekaboo gondola. And I actually have two gondolas I'm going to work with. They're both USRA gondolas built about 1919. And so this particular car was modified into this style in about 1956, which is a little new for me so I could have to cheat on history.

I like to be reverent with history and do everything right, but I have to cheat on history a little bit, because this car would be a little new for my purposes. But also you notice Bob, and the floor in that car. The floor, I was just looking at the floor. But it's actually the wrong floor. Oh, it is.

They did not have drop doors in these cars. So it's a wonderful job. The floor is fantastic, it's a real wood floor, isn't it? Yeah, it's real wood laser drawn. But actually I bought North Eastern stripped wood, describe what I mean.

And I already cut one to check the size. So all I have to do is get in there with my chiseled blade xacto, and scrape that whole thing out of there. It's dying for some weathering, this wide floor. It's gonna get all warm, they glue it down in there and I it's going to get all broken up. Anyway, this is another SL per car, it's just a wonderful car.

A wonderful break detail on the underside. So for future shows, I've actually mentioned that I'm going to title my gondola episode here, The Tale of Two Gondolas. Ooh, I like it. Because I actually have two cars, and I'm gonna modify them two different ways. And I actually have a whole bag of detailed parts which I wasn't sure I would get into it today, but I'll just give you a quick show of what I've got.

While you're pulling some of those out, let's get to my personal favorite question so far from Joe. What is the best way to clean your hands after weathering cars? Or does it just come off with water? At home, I have a bar of lava soap in the bathroom and that lava works fantastic because as you can tell, this isn't for the faint of heart, this weathering thing. Or you probably use the gloves.

So you could just prevent it with gloves. I never do because I'm just too lazy to do stuff like that. So, and it makes too much sense. So I just wash my hands when I'm done, but the powders is one thing, but it's when you start dabbing with the other paints. I came to work the other day, and somebody thought there was something wrong with my...

It took me about nine times to mix maroon, rock island maroon. And I had it on my hand, I went to work that way, and then people thought something was wrong with me. And it's like, here's this maroon paint on my hands. But that's what-- That is funny. All right, so what did you pull out from here, Doug?

Well, let's do an example of the type of thing that I do on these cars and then first of all, and I've shown these on the air before, but these are Northwest short line 33 inch protos, 64 wheels and there, I'm sure available again, there was a little bit of a hold up for the change in ownership in Northwest Shortline but I'm sure there'll be available again for anybody that's in proto 64, but they also make this type of wheel for other scales, like proto 48, or whatever scale you might be in. So that, and then Kadee, of course, Kadee is the mainstay in couplers for every scale. And these are Kadee S scale couplers. I'm going to show it, I'll have Bob show it. I'll pass both of these over.

Those two things, start with those. This is a bit informal today. You know, it's got a new set up here, so... There you go, Doug. There's your 808 couplers.

There you go, and then this is no, these gondolas that I'm working on have an old fashioned crank style brake. And they would have been modified to an AB brake set. And so this is a brake set, that I'll be using the came from Des Plaines Hobbies. And Des Plaines Illinois, and they have a very complete selection of S scale stuff along with of course, other scales. And I want to make you see if you can see the label on this one, but also these early cars had the, well both of these cars that I have here have a rung style ladders rather than actual a one-piece ladder.

And so these are ladders that I will use for the gondolas and these are actually box car ladders that come with the stirrup step from Des Plaines under their brand name S Scale America. And of course I'll have to, when I'm using them on a box card, I'll use them the full ladder. But when I put them on a gondola, then I can just cut the ladder down to the the height that I need. So that's what I'm gonna be doing. And you'll have to watch now for...

We're getting to be winter weather in Minnesota, which is good Model Railroad weather. It's coming up fast. Yeah, so it's good to just stay home, turn up the heat. Turn up the heat, and work on your model. Perfect example, this is what I love doing.

Now here you guys, the the roof is coming along very well. I've got my powders on here. One thing I did and I don't know, we didn't really see it, but I used this Testors Dell code, it's called. And yeah, once again, using a well ventilated area. We're not great here, but this stuff works so well and it gives your finish dead flat.

And even when the dull coat is wet, I will apply the powders. And as you can tell, the dull coat now has dried, and the powders are remaining in. It's giving that nice textured rusty look to this boxcar roof, I'm really getting-- Dull coat's a little bit tacky. And then you put the right pigments on there. Now we have a medium question.

Have you ever weathered with chalk? Do you need to spray the model before you use it? If you're working with chalk. Chalk, I've done, this is a perfect example. I'm using a combination of the chalks and the powders.

Basically the powders is the same as using powder chalk and I've used, I put my chalks right onto this box car roof. And I've used both ways where I've sprayed the dull coat, and that gives it a nice tooth for the powders to bite into. And this did not have any dull coat. It was just the finish of the boxcar roof. And I'm just basically applying these, the powders to the roof.

And now I'm taking my thinners now, and it's just kind of bleeding that into the diagonal panels of the roof and this weld seams Paul wants to know in your opinion, is there any amount of weathering that looks too fake or too much? That's a great question because going by a good prototype photo of the year. Now with the internet, it's so nice to be able to get on the internet, this photo was taken in 1976, '77, '78 in my era, and I can duplicate the weathering panels. Now a good example, is my engine on the in the front here The 738 the Soo 738, I thought, okay, this is neat. Now it's 1978 was when this photo was taken, but I wanted to model that weathering pattern on there.

So I'm just kind of cheating a little bit in my era. And it's a shelf model for now until I put a decoder in it. But I just so loved, here, I'll show it to our camera here. Well, no, another thing that I do-- I love the weathering on this photo I found. I just wanted to duplicate this pattern because it looks, I'll tell you, doing the Soo line, It's like a white Soo Line locomotive is equivalent to an artist's blank canvas.

There's nothing better for showing weathering patterns. No, I was going to say that when you're doing a 40 foot box car there. That is probably 40 years old. So as far as weathering goes, if the car has never been updated to repainted. Now in your case, they redid the roof.

Would that actually have been a whole new roof or do you think they just-- Well, it's the, I'll tell you about that. I love that shot you guys. There's an example where you just if you copy the real thing, you can't put it on. This is what's neat about using a prototype photo. It's not a much like an artist capturing a painting.

If you use the prototype as a guide, you're gonna do probably pretty good. I'm gonna put this back real quick you guys. Yeah this box car, Doug is a good example. The Soo Line replaced the roofs on these box cars. Oh, and the, in the late 50s.

So this added habit, the box car roof that this car kit came with, the Atlas model, had a correct roof when it was built in 1932. And then the 50s, late 50s, a Soo Line replaced these roofs with galvanized diagonal panel roofs. So I had to chop out a car roof from another car. I put it this car and I use my dremmel to carve the roof out and put this roof in just to have one car of this series that the roof was correct. Well, I mean, what's neat is then to the sides of the car a lot older than the roof.

Correct. So the sides look really weathered and rusty. Actually it's good that you mentioned that also Doug, because the skirting of this box car also got rebuilt in the same when they did the roof. So this had a little bit different, had more of a skirting like this, like the prototype photo here. So this car is going to need some weathering, I'm just gonna use some chalks to weather the sides of this car, but I've got a good start on the roof though here.

This is probably not going to do much more to this roof. Well part of the fun for me, is doing the research to figure all that out. Exactly. And so you look at, I have a railway equipment register. You can look at when these cars were around on the actual railroad.

If you don't have a copy of that, a railway-- They're invaluable. I've seen those floating around. I have copies, but I've seen them floating around on eBay. And it'd be all the roster of all the freight cars and all of the North American railroads. And you can see when that particular car operated.

I'll show you real quick here, you guys. A finishing touch I like to apply to my cars, the coupler knuckles. So I've got some rust. I'm putting rust on the knuckles. We have a couple of quick questions that just came in as well.

First let's do one from our guests here asking, do modelers typically spray with Dole coat their models that have been weathered with weathering powders? Does it clear coat change the look of the weathering? And is it necessary? I think, especially for the roof, that dull coat, that really ties everything together. Like these powders, and it gives it an ultra dead flat gritty look.

Just like we were talking about on the sides of the wheels. That's kind of what you want to see on a roof. And it's not always easy to find shot photos of the roof of cars, but it can be done especially with the internet and in books. And it's just invaluable for weathering. Great, and then max has a question about pan pastels.

What do you think of those for finishing wood structures? I see them recommended for weathering a great deal. And I believe you have some with you today. I have some pan pastels, here's some pan pastels right here. This is...

What is this color? Oh, raw umber. I'll let you get a shot of it there. I do flat card decks and I'll even use the pan pastels on a plastic wood flat card deck if you use some sandpaper, some airbrushing pan pastels, you can make a plastic wood flat card deck look or like real-- Yeah, I've seen that. I really like doing that technique, but yeah, I like pan pastels for that, for weathering wood also.

Well even on your G scale, flat card out here I see that you did great up the board. That's a plastic deck. Yeah. We have another question that came in from a viewer on YouTube that's asking, what do you use for a wash? That's...

Well, there's a good example is the terpenoid for a wash and that's what I was trying to demonstrate on the, when I have my rust blotches applied to the boxcar, using the wash is a great way to have your rust patches bleed down. For example, let me do it real quick on the other side here. Let me put a couple of quick blotches here. So you're starting out with artists oils then? Artists oil.

And terpenoid. Yup. I'll just put a couple on the rust seams along the weld seams here, we'll take our a Q-tip with the terpenoid, and let's just do a wash real quick here of this. Now watch and see what this does here. This terpenoid, see what that does?

It starts bleeding, and it interacts with the oils. And you don't get their Q-tip real wet, it just kind of damp. It's kind of just damp, but it can be wet. I'm actually using it as a wash right now. So, now let's wash and when it dries, it'll leave a nice weathered pattern on the side of the car.

Do you have good tips for weathering decals and faded signs? This is a question coming from B. Schaefer. Weathering decals, and then faded signs. Weathering decals.

See, I do a lot of decaling, but I weather the decals once they're applied. Yeah, weathering over and the whole car. Yes. But maybe on a sign though, and a sign on a building, would be the same technique really. And then as I mentioned, sometimes I use, I could go back and forth and so I'll use an acrylic wash too, depending whatever mood I'm in.

And so I have a little bit of everything and I think that's the way to do it, they have a choice. It has some artists oils have some craft acrylic paints and Bob is using a little paper plate over here but, scorch some paints out and just pretend you're Picasso, You can always remove it if you don't like it with more of the terpenoid. But now here, I have the wet terpenoid on the car. And I'm just going to make a couple of blotches with the Q-tip here. And you can see on that white Soo Line.

Does anyone ever add graffiti to a train car? It seems hard, but are there any details available? That's a whole subject on its own and you know, I was telling you guys how I like to watch trains now. There's nothing I really care about photographing or modeling nowadays from the prototype freight cars, but the graffiti on these freight cars, it's an art form onto itself. There's guys that model modern era and graffiti probably came in, I would say the late 90s, mid 90s, early 90s, before that you didn't see graffiti.

Now all these freight cars have graffiti. And I don't like to see it... You're right, I don't either. But it's quite the art form. I'll even photograph them occasionally.

It's like, that's amazing. And guys model it. If you research online, you'll be able to find people that model graffiti decals, and some guys, Kim Patterson. He paints graffiti on train cars and-- A lot of people who photograph real graffiti, and then turn it into a decal. So you can put it on a model.

So there's all kinds of ways nowadays. Get a little bit creative. But if it's a really cool looking graffiti, not that I like graffiti, but it was really cool, you can photograph it and put it on the model. In shows down the road here we're gonna talk about a lot of things, I want to have Bob here to talk about detailing locomotives and we want to talk about buildings. And Bob actually is really good at building bridges.

I've built some bridges, a few-- A lot of different subjects we like to talk about, and before we run out of time, I want to make sure that that have you folks send in comments of things you'd like to see. Yes, we did have an enthusiastic thumbs up for the airbrushing and we're gonna see that some point. Yeah, that'll be great. Lemme show you guys one more quick little thing here while we have the closeup camera available. One last thing I like to do when I'm finishing up my model, I like to apply with some testers, silver paint on the air hose, the end of the air hose, and this is the angle cock up here.

And there's some little detail. This silver just does a nice job of bringing out that little detail on the end of the air hose here. Let's do the other end here. Sorry about the movement there. It's okay, Bob.

Gotta get both sides. That's usually my little finishing touch to a boxcar. A freight car project is the detailing the air hose. So one other quick thing I thought about is whole different subject, but you know, our friend our G scale friend who set up a question in last month, about putting the track outside. Well, I actually did that.

I took a two foot section of a track, and I put it outside my house out next to the garage. I'm going to leave it there all winter. So we are in process. And we'll see, come spring. I'll bring it in here and we'll try it.

We'll just hook it up and we'll see how the locomotive runs. Oh, something to look forward to in the spring. You guys were talking about the track last time, the brass track with G scale. And that's what I do. Like the track you see on the table here, I've done that every place pieces attract and within a year, it brass track weather.

So realistically outdoors. And it's still conducts if you still do DC, but yeah, the brass track will weather outdoor very realistically, and I do it all the time. Bob also has wireless battery and that'd be another thing we need to talk about here. We want to talk about-- Marv got me into air wire, I love it. And so we'll have wireless G scale and there's odd.

You can actually put a locomotive and say right on this table and let it run with no track. I can run my engine on the table with no track. So we've got a lot of things to talk about over the winter. We got to... We do have one final question.

I think we can slide in here too. Split rock three two three on YouTube is asking, do you have a good method of replicating the wheel spray dirt that accumulates on the ends of freight cars? Another good question. The splatter, yup. Combination of airbrushing can work.

If you adjust your airbrush properly, he's talking about, where the ends of the cars where you would see the... Flies up from the wheel. Where it flies up from the wheels. I take a narrow brush and just flick it like a toothbrush. You can do that, you can do that.

You can take your powders here and put some rust effects. There, some powder effects there. Like in the underside of a hopper car, where you see it sprayed up on the actual hoppers, you can flick the spray. It makes a nice effect. I've seen that technique where the end of a toothbrush even.

I've actually cut some of the bristles off of a toothbrush, you can do that 'cause the toothbrushes might be kind of wide, but you can cut off about half the bristles on either side and make a narrow and do that flick. That's an excellent question. As I was mentioning before, the ends of a boxcar can show just that gunky is black. So many even take some more of my black, this is powder chalk and it's just a black end of a car. You can't put too much weathering on the end of a boxcar, Doug.

That's right. Keep sending these questions in and if we don't get to this time, we'll get to next time. We are at the end of our hour. So while he's finishing up over here, I wanted to give Doug a chance. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we finish?

I think I covered pretty much everything I had. Although like I say, I have my own little project over here and maybe Bob and I will work together on my little S scale project. And then we'll do some other things, bridge work, buildings. I notice somebody has sent in a question in about bridgework there somewhere. Yeah, excited about some build bridge building.

Bob actually built a freeway bridge-- A couple of them. Back in the day when you could go to the highway department in 1980, and they'd give you the plans. The highway department sent him plans for the Freeway Bridge. They printed them a on a microfilm, and I've got the plans for the 35 W bridge. And then railroad bridges, trestles and things.

And so there's lot of things to talk about. So please, we want to get going with more hands-on this winter, so let's-- How about you Chooch? Any parting words? Well next time, I'll bring my rock island Jeep 18, and show you how it turned out. Okay, and then when you build an engine house, rock island engine house.

That's right, yeah. We'll bring that some day and put it on a diagram here. Send in a suggestions. Absolutely, and as always remember to follow us on social media, we're on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, until the next time, I've got Mr. Clickity over here, Doug Hogdon and Bob Chooch Revard.

My name is Leah. We will see you next time on Track Talk Live