Ltd Edition Rolling Stock

My current collection of rolling stock does not have much in the way of special club cars or limited edition cars.  I will state upfront that I don't have much interest in collecting specialty or club cars, rather, I like to have fairly prototypical cars that I can put directly into operation.  But I do have a soft spot for certain uniquely branded cars, especially if I can justify that they might be found in northern Ontario or northern US service.  And yes, I do even have one NMRA car that I purchased in a moment of weakness while attending my first NMRA National Convention (Toronto, 2003).  Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even assembled that car.

Several years ago I was searching on-line for rolling stock which might have been associated with paper mills in the northeast US or eastern Canada.  I was already familiar with the Spruce Falls Power  & Paper boxcar, and wondered if any other mills might have specialty cars.  In my search, I came across a fellow from the Eastern Maine Model Railroad club who was selling some special run cars which had been produced by their club.  While several of the cars produced as the Fraser Paper trailer and boxcar, none of those cars were available.  However, a 50 ft boxcar lettered for the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad caught my eye due to its unique name for a railroad. So a little research was in order after I received the two boxcars.

According to Bruce Cooper's website (A SURVIVING SHORTLINE CONTEMPORARY OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD: THE BELFAST & MOOSEHEAD LAKE RAILROAD), the railroad was located entirely within the boundaries of rural Waldo County, Maine, and the B&ML’s “last spike” was driven a mere sixteen months after the Pacific railroad's “Golden Spike” at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869.  While there was a whole lot more history to the B&ML, I thought the purchase of two boxcars would make a great addition to my CN, CP, ONR and other boxcars that were servicing the paper mill.

The club produced the car in only number, so my first task was to re-letter the two cars I purchased by adding another digit with the decals provided. After all, the prototype didn't actually have these cars so a little artistic license was not a problem.

Next step was off to the weathering station. With the exception of wheels and trucks, I have settled on a mixture of using oils and pan pastel chalks for my weathering efforts.  I still like to use spray paint or a small brush to apply a dark color to the wheels, bearing box, etc, and then build up the rust and dirt colors from there.

Once the wheels are done, it's time for the shell.  First step is a quick spray of dull coat to the entire car. Once this is dry, I begin to add pan pastels to the body, starting with the vertical ribs. Using a fine brush, a small amount of dark color such as black or brown is added to either side of the rib and then a wider brush is used to blend this is to the area between individual ribs.  Unfortunately no prototype photo to base the weathering efforts on, so I dug into my photo collection and found a general boxcar roof and used that as my guide.  Car 360 got a much heavier application of color than 361, mostly because I wanted to skip ahead to the sides.  361 will be revisited and the weathering effort intensified.

Weathering the roof on 360

Very small amount of roof weathering on 361

The sides will be done next using a combination of oil paints and panpastel chalks. I'll cover that in the next blog