Kato B&M Hopper

All rusted up and ready to roll.

Awhile back Peter Mumby gave me a three package of B&M covered hopper in kit form. There was a view of the boxed models a few weeks back in Wordless Wednesday. I thought I would get at it in June as Peter's birthday is early July and I wanted to give him one back weathered for that occasion. I assembled his model first just in case they would take more time than I had. The other two went together once I had the first one done. There are a lot of parts in this Kato kit but all goes together well.

One change was I used Kadee true scale 158 couplers instead of the Kato offerings. I did not like the looks of the stock couplers.

I gave the model a coat of flat finish than went at it with my gray tone PanPastels. I highlight a couple of the hatches with rust. Raw umber shade was applied on the lower area. These cars carried cement so they would have lots of a powder substance on board. 

I did add a few rust spots on the sides using AK rust steaks and Bragdon medium rust streaked down from the center of the spots. More on the other two shortly...George Dutka  

The model is well underway at this point.

Two kits are assembled and ready for weathering but I have this third one to assemble first.

Peter's model is staged for a photo shoot prior to be wrapped up.