Weathering. . . Weathering

Well, The Wife has had her second bunion surgery so I've been relegated to Nurse and been told to stick close for three days.  That gave me the opportunity to address a couple of projects that have been sitting around for a while.

The Granddaughters gave me a 40' AAR Double Door Southern Railway boxcar some time back that needed a small amount of assembly:

Oops, this is not MY model, but an advertisement picture to give a "before" shot.

I have yet to really try significant "weathering" but thought this would be a good "clean slate" to try on.  Looking for something along these lines:

I had seen something about dry brushing the white lettering to give a chalking effect.  Used Testor's flat white and a stiff brush about 3/8" wide.  Maybe got a bit carried away.  One suggestion was to not start the chalking ABOVE the lettering, which made lots of sense.

Also used some Testor's flat black with dry brush, followed by some grey and darker brown chalk to brush on with a make-up sponge before the paint was really dry.  Tried to layer it on a bit thick at the bottom, near the trucks, and on each end.  The C&O boxcar shows some of this. . . .

Here's a shot from almost done, but some of roof is still "virgin".

Next step was to spray a bit of matte finish to protect the chalk.  So, without couplers (will use Kadee, not what was in the kit), here's the finished product.  The car has a 1952 build date, so it's obviously seen some pretty heavy duty up to September, 1956 era of the layout!!!

Looks pretty much like the C&O proto give or take the streaky white paint.  Maybe next time we'll shoot for something more like the Norfolk Southern whitening.