In June 2014 on a road trip to Wyoming from the SF Bay area we were passing by Fernley NV. North of Hwy 80 is a facility for Nevada Cement visible from the highway, and they sometimes have rolling stock parked on a spur out front. Convincing the family to pull over, I shot a few flicks of some crusty old UP boxcars, including this one.

I filed the photo away, and didn't think about it for a while.

A few years later at a local Bay Area Prototype Modelers event, I picked up a kit from Cannon and Co (Dave Hussey's a frequent attendee). I may have associated the older picture with the kit (I am guilty of buying things sometimes for which I don't have a prototype in mind) but after a little research I found my photo to be a match for this kit.

Cannon and Company kits are familiar to me, having worked a long time ago on some of the Modelers Choice kits. I'm not a great builder- for each project, it seems I commit an error, like not including sufficient bracing inside the flat-kit walls; using too much/little liquid cement in spots, etc. I mean I'm fine, not a ham-handed catastrophe, but I am definitely not a museum quality builder. But this build was pretty much on par with others I've been happy with, so a good starting point.

OK, so this got challenging.

First came some yellow. Too bright, and some orange peel too (though I didn't mind that, honestly- looked cool!). I think it was the paint- I have had issues with yellow paint in the past- something about the pigments? Consult a chemist.

Welp, time to add some orange/brown, and the large UP heralds (from Mask Island decals).

Looking better. Then came some weathering/darkening.

Then some patchouts.

The roofs in the pictures looked surprisingly untouched- no big pools of rusty corrosion. So a thin wash, and some touches on the edges to add some color.

Then it was time to start hitting the graffiti. Looked like a tall mountain to climb, especially after I found a few pictures of the other side (photos property of respective owners). The dates on the pictures (and the pictures themselves) show the layers of tagging that the car has endured.

Being a little crazy, I opted for the third image, which was taken around the same time as my picture.

I don't have blow by blow of the graffiti- normal techniques, nothing unusual. Lots of craft paints I still had in inventory (paints have been REALLY hard to find the last six months). Anyway, here's the final result, after adding Plano cut levers (oops! forgot those).

I felt so good getting this over the line- it was really a labor of love.

Cannon and Company kit (roster here), with Mask Island decals. A few photos from rrpicturearchives.net, and of course my own that started this.

Huge shout out goes to Dan Arnold, who I don't know but I've consumed a lot of his work on YouTube. I've gotten a lot of energy by watching his projects and his Railbox tutorial was the inspiration for this car.

Back to HO Scale 2021.

Back to HO Scale Rolling Stock.

Back to Home