I remember 1976. I turned 10 that year. The bicentennial was celebrated in a lot of ways, but I remember a certain pride in being part of it. Railroads were also in tune with the mood of the year and painted locomotives, cabooses and some rolling stock with red, white and blue. I was looking to accomplish something on the railroad prior to leaving on vacation to see my son and his wife in Texas. I'm now part of a railroading community called Big Blue Trains and I've spent a few hours corresponding with some of them and sharing the joys and sorrows of model railroading. It's restoked my fire to get back to work on my layout, which also corresponds to the dog days of summer when it's too hot to spend a whole lot of time outside battling weeds. I got to thinking about a simple project focused on Independence Day and remembered I had a pair of 40-ft trailers that I'd received for Christmas a few years ago - they are Chicago and Northwestern assets that are decorated with a "Happy Birthday America" message as well as red, white and blue stripes.
As you can see, yesterday these trailers were factory fresh, and they'd been that way (aside from collecting some dust on the roofs) since pulling them out of the packaging. I started wondering if the CNW painted brand-new trailers, or just some that had already been in service. Did a little web search and found a picture of a similar CNW trailer...
This was more like the 1976 I remembered! The trailer is used and dirty - it looks like they just painted over the dirt. I wanted to replicate that look (even though my trailers were smooth sided, and the one in the picture has corrugated sides.
Since I wanted to preserve (more of less) the pristine stripes and CNW logo, etc., I took some masking tape and cut out pieces to mask the two trailers.
Then I decided the glossy, silver look had to go. Even after a few days of running, those surfaces were going to fade and get dirty. I mixed some paint (acrylic white with a dot of black and mixed it to a light gray) and added drops of water until the result was a runny, milky wash. I then hit all of the surfaces (even the black underbodies).
The result was a little too "washy", but that's the great thing about acrylic paints. Add a little water and rub with your fingers until you get the effect you're looking for. What I ended up were areas where the glossy silver came through, but not anywhere near "new". I then added some brown to the wash along with more water and hit the undersides and lower side frames, rear door latches and corners (that's where rust starts on these trailers from my experience).
Then it was time to get the PanPastels out - first black to emphasize all of the corners and joints of the sidewalls, steps and rear door hardware. I also hit the passenger-side corner - back in the 70's most trucks had a single exhaust on that corner and the diesel was really sooty. Trailers always had a black corner.
I then added some rust and dusted most of the surfaces with gray.
Then it was time to unmask and reassemble!
And here's how they look on a flatcar.
These capture what I was trying to portray - beat up trailers with a splash of new paint - similar to the prototype.
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