Weathering Rolling Stock Running Boards

A close-up of a trio of roof that I just finished. Each roof was done the same but to different degrees.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few afternoons working on weathering some of my rolling stock roofs. This post we will focus on the running boards. What I did was paint the wooden running boards to look like the paint had worn off to different degrees. I worked on a few at a time...did 6 cars over the two days. The boxcars had already some degree of weathering and most of the roofs had been painted a gray tone to emulate failing paint on the steel and overcoated with a brown PanPastel that looks similar to boxcar red.   

The running boards all got a coat of Floquil grime (as Floquil is not available one can use Hunterline concrete for this task or one of the AK gray filter stains) which gives one a very realistic weathered look as wood on plastic. I then coated the running boards with varying degree of PanPastel raw umber shade. I want each car to look a bit different...more on roofing tomorrow...George Dutka

The running boards done with Floquil grime and PanPastels on two MEC Atlas boxcars.

The grime has been applied to three of my boxcar running boards.

PanPastel raw umber shade was applied first followed by a bit of red iron oxide extra dark on one of them.