I’ve been stealth working on the doors [Türen] for the boxcar [Güterwagen]. I painted a piece of Bristol board with the Holbein acryla-gouache paints. I used a 50/50 mix of Naple Yellow and Raw Sienna for the base color, and applied it with a paint knife. I made it too thick, and the paint has cracked - it appears to have tiny pock-marks randomly everywhere. […]
I tried adding another detail to the boxcar. These are the little steps (one each side) that a worker would use to step up onto the front deck. I’ve not done this detail on previous boxcars, so this is another new item. They turned out ok, though a little fragile. I drilled small holes, then jammed flat pieces of metal into the holes. These are bent, and thus support the wood step. The step seems a little thick, but my other choice is half that thickness, which I fear would look punky. […]
I stamped the doors with the rubber stamp - and they turned out nicely. I made four doors, though the boxcar [Güterwagen] only needs two. I figure two are “under-studies” for in case the two good ones have a mishap (hopefully not). If nothing else, the under-studies give me some technique practice before doing stuff to the good doors. […]
I’ve been slowly, but steadily, working on the boxcar. I glued the doors to basswood that had been painted white, then cut them out, and painted the edges yellow. The doors being made out of painted bristol board are not thick enough, so I glued them to basswood. This got spread out over a few evenings because I wanted the doors after being painted or glued to be smushed under heavy books to ensure that they came out flat. They came out almost flat.
Now, I am starting to cut and glue down the vertical pieces on the sides. Next will be painting the layers of dirt - the blue and the black wash. I am going to remix the blue paint - I want it to be just a bit more gray.
I finished painting, cutting, and gluing the vertical pieces to the sides, front, and rear of the boxcar. I didn’t glue the doors on yet because I figure it will be easier to paint the blue and black wash without the doors in the way. I did make sure that the doors fit perfectly in their spaces.
The width of the spaces for the windows came out better than in the past, but still not perfect. Two are 8mm wide, and 2 are 9mm wide. Interestingly, both the 8mm wide window spaces are on the right and the 9mm spaces are on the left, which means that the 8mm spaces are kittywampus from each other….and probably cannot be adjusted for in the end as doing so would make the boxcar not have 90 degree angels at the joints. Oh well…gotta have something to fix next time!
I’m not sure that the photo shows clearly what I wanted it to show. The photo is supposed to show the two long sides with the blue paint added, and the contrast in the effective color result against the the two short end pieces that have not received the blue paint.
Well, I put the blue paint on the two short pieces since taking the photo. I remixed the blue paint, made it more gray and more blue - a gentler blue, if you will. I’m quite pleased with the overall effect. I have not added the black wash yet - just not psychicly (is that a word?) ready yet. I wonder if I should add the black wash when the sides are done, but before I form them into a box. […]
I glued on the doors and their trimming. I pulled the boxcar side pieces up off of that piece of bristol board and re-taped them down on a piece of thick basswood. I also put a vertical piece of tape through the long sides (with paper to protect the boxcar paint), to try and hold the long sides flatter. They are still bowed. But hopefully, they won’t get worse.
There’s still plenty of work to be done on the boxcar sides. It always seems to me that this part of the boxcar construction really drags and takes forever. It is a lot of little detail pieces that make a huge difference as a whole, but they are really tiny pieces individually.
This car will be history-making in that it will be the first car that I have made that I put an actual car number on it. And hopefully, every car after this will also get a number put on it. This boxcar is “Gb 5091″.
I am using photoshop to make the number piece for the car. There is a square-shaped plate on each boxcar to the left of the doors (the doors always open sliding to the right, no matter which side of the train car they are on). This plate is supposed to have more than just the car number, but the info is really tiny. The size of the numbers is less than 1mm high, and the other info is even smaller. So I am just putting on the number. […]
The boxcar [Güterwagen] is now officially “Gb 5091″. Whew!
I took another try at the info thing. I scanned the drawing in the RhB book into the computer at a high resolution, then edited it with Photoshop and added the info that goes below the car number. The drawing in the book wasn’t clear nor readable, so the info ended up also not readable. I’m a little iffy about having unreadable stuff on the car, but it is really tiny, and from any distance, it adds visually despite being unreadable. The “Gb 5091″ is readable, of course - that is important.
I never did make a list of improvements for this boxcar to make it better than the previous boxcar. I didn’t because I wasn’t sure of what improvements I would successfully achieve. I had some things in mind to try, but I didn’t feel confident that I would pull them off. At this point in this boxcar’s construction, I have successfully implemented a number of improvements - wheel journals, brakes, paint color, dirt, front steps, adding the car number, overall dimensions/proportions, and making the door logo nice. […]
After a few practice attempts, I got the window drawn and cut-out. I made two sets of guides for these. One set for the white box that the “x” goes in, and the other set for the cut-lines for cutting the windows out. Since the windows are not the same size (they are supposed to be - but I haven’t quite gotten that problem under control — this boxcar has less of a problem than previous boxcars, though) - two of the windows are 8mm wide and two are 9mm wide - so I made each set of cut-outs have the two sizes that I needed. This worked nicely. Unfortunately, you can still see that they are different widths.
I finished the windows, the window trim, and the window hardware today. And I am pooped! I tried out using “matte medium” to glue the window hardware. I’ve had a bottle of this stuff sitting around my home for a year or so. I bought it to use for gluing the ballast on that old piece of track. For that, you mix it 50/50 with water and dribble the resulting liquid over the ballast and let it dry. A miracle occurs, and this liquid that seems very unlike glue, actually holds the ballast in place. […]
Whew! This completes the sides of the boxcar; they are ready for final assembly. But, I still have do more work on the under-carriage — it needs the front railing made.
Doing this metal-work is probably my least favorite part of making these boxcars. The window hardware is not too hard, but the door hardware is really tough. Typically, I’ve sited the holes, drilled them, then made the metal parts. The problem with that method is that I have to make each piece ten times before it fits right (and the paint doesn’t get scratched off the metal). So this time, I made the metal parts first, then used them as guides for siting and drilling the holes. This vastly improved things. I still had to make a few pieces multiple times, but never more than two or three times. […]
I made the front railing last night and painted it today. I’ve also now glued the four sides together and have started the roof. The roof is made of a piece of basswood (soaked in water and bent over a cylinder and allowed to dry) and a piece of bristol board. I have found that it is best to glue down the basswood, then glue the bristol board over it, as this allows the basswood to remain flexible while gluing it - and getting it to fit perfectly over the curved ends. I have never managed to find a cylinder the correct diameter. […]
Boy, am I tempted to stay up all night! But I have to go to work tomorrow. I got the front decking on, I got the floor glued - and so far the glue is holding the sides straight (at the floor level). So next is weighing and putting the coins in, then the ceiling (hold the sides in at the top), then last but not the least the two pieces of the roof. […]
This boxcar is a smidge longer and a smidge taller than the previous boxcars. This is because I had the real dimensions this time instead of making an educated guess. As a result of it being wider, the Sacagawea gold dollar coin fit inside. The other two coins are bicentennial quarters from 1976.
Announcing the completion of a car always feels a little like a birth announcement. Overall, I’m very pleased, but I currently suffer that designers post-completion depression. I plan to do a photo shoot tomorrow of the boxcar. […]
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After cutting out the information plaques, I made sure that they fit properly, then painted the edges with the paint that I’ve been using on the undercarriage. That paint is a little darker, but I think that is ok. The plaque is supposed to have just the tiniest overhang on the top, which I didn’t make. I’ve tried in the past but it always comes out too big and looks clumsy. I have found that anything too big really ruins the realism. I thought about making it out of regular thin paper, but I think the paper would buckle and never make a straight edge. So I opted for painting the edges slightly darker, thinking that darkness may just read as overhang. I’m not sure it really worked though. Maybe I should have been sloppier painting the edges.
For the little white piece in the lower right-hand corner of the plaque, I added the destination information piece. On the previous boxcars, this was made out of Bristol board, but I decided that was too clumsy. This time I made it out of very thin brass. I used a piece of brass that I apparently cut off of a .005″ thick sheet, but I don’t remember. I’ve had this strip of brass sitting on my desk for a long time, and find it hard to believe that I cut that strip. It is the perfect width and I had thought about doing this on a previous car, but had not done so. *sigh* I painted the piece with Holbein neutral gray #1, then used the dry brush technique to add a little dirt around the edges. The dirt is a little of the undercarriage purple-gray mixed into the neutral gray #1.
I glued the info plaque down with wood carpenter’s glue, and the destination pieces with the contact cement.