NW 58th St., Miami

[Mileswestern]

Looks like you could easily model that car starting with a Genesis 60' highcube and modifying the double doors down to the 1 1/2 doors seen in the photo. A worthy project and one that'll really set your time/place as far as rolling stock is concerned.

[cnw1961]

I am glad you enjoyed my pics. Your kind words are highly appreciated, thank you.

Bruce, that car might make a good future modeling project. Thank you for the picture.

Miles, I will have a closer look at the Athearn highcubes.

[Steve]

Kurt...
WOW!!!!

I guess that just about covers it.....
It is always awesome to see art appear before your very eyes where there was once just a piece of plastic. Very very inspirational, my friend.

[tetters]

It looks 100 X's better!

Shame on you Tetters

Kurt, even though you patched a perfectly good BNSF boxcar, you did a fantastic job on it and i really like it!!

Actually Josh. I think Kurt could have made a bit more rusty.

[LynnB]

Kurt...
WOW!!!!

I guess that just about covers it.....
It is always awesome to see art appear before your very eyes where there was once just a piece of plastic. Very very inspirational, my friend.

My words exactley, well done.

[cnw1961]

Actually Josh. I think Kurt could have made a bit more rusty.

Tetters, behave yourself!

[cnw1961]

Steve, I am glad you like my car and thank you for your nice comment, and Lynn, thank you for concurring with Steve , but really, it is not artistry, it is just patience .

I did not use my airbrush to weather this car, I applied several washes of diluted acrylic paints. To make it easier to apply the washes, I started with spraying a thin coat of Dullcote . I mixed raw sienna and black to get a medium to dark gray color and then thinned the paint heavily with water. If you can clearly see an effect after the first wash, then the color needs to be diluted even more. It will take several washes to get the desired effect. In this pic you see, how the car looked after about 4 washes (the patches were done after the washes).



Apply the thinned paint with a soft paintbrush, don’t drown the car and avoid to create puddles, especially at the end of the strokes when you lift the paintbrush off. If the paint is dripping off when you apply the first wash, take a soft rag and rub the car dry with it (taking care not to damage any details). The next wash should work well. You can speed up the procedure by carefully drying the washes wit a hairdryer.

I did not want a rusted roof like on my blue GVSR car, but the procedure is the same, I only did it to a lesser extent. I mixed rust brown acrylic paint with yellow and wiped the paint on to the roof with a soft rag, not covering the entire roof and only leaving a light yellowish shine. Then I took a stiff 1/2" paintbrush, dipped it into the rust brow paint, wiped off most of it on a piece of paper and then stippled the roof with it, concentrating on some areas. After the paint had dried, I washed the roof two or three times with my sienna/black mix. The patches were done with an airbrush, using glossy paint for the black patches. And again, after the patches had dried, I gave the cars some washes with my sienna/black paint, followed by more washes with a much lighter (more raw sienna) colored paint. After painting the rusty patches and applying the decals, I only needed to seal the car with Dullcote.

All in all, a lot of work and patience, not much artistry . To weather a car with an airbrush takes much less time, but it is very unlikely that you ruin a car when weathering with washes ... and if you don’t like the results, you can wipe it all off again with a moist rag, if you don’t wait too long.

[cnw1961]

Just a short work report. I continued applying ground cover and adding grass.



Gluing all this grass down takes a lot of time and can be tedious, so to have a little change, I started to add some details. This corner of Miami is very dirty with trash everywhere. To give my layout a realistic look, I need to dump a lot of waste like this damaged cardboard box,



or some pages of the Miami Herald. These pages are really from the Miami Herald. I hope they won’t sue me for violating their copyright

[Steamtrains]

That's just fantastic...!!
Sue you..?? They should run a feature article on this layout...!! And be honored to see their rag on your layout....

BTW...How did you shrink those pages..??

[tetters]

Four words...

BEE - U - TEE - FUL!

[Trucklover]

Holy Cow Kurt, youve really done it this time, MAN THAT IS SWEET!!! The grass and trash are absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! Never thought i would say trash was beautiful LOL

GREAT work Kurt

[cnw1961]

Thank you, my friends. Trashing the layout comes naturally to me .

Gus, I found the pages doing a Google image search. Before printing them out, I scaled the down in Photoshop. I sanded the backside of the paper to make it as thin as possible.

[Bigsteel]

:jawdrop: :jawdrop: man Kurt! your detail is amazing! a freaking real newspaper, that's nuts! just one question,is the large white building with the boxcar next to it getting a dirt treatment? i figured a white building would look kinda dirty,atleast on the bottom half. but other than my nitpicking fantastic job --josh

[cnw1961]

Josh, you are absolutely right. I still have to work on this building. I will have a close look at the prototype of this structure to get the weathering right. BTW, nothing on my layout is finished yet.

[Steve]

kurt...
As you know, I (like many of us) spend a lot of time online looking at various MRR websites, marveling at what the very best modelers can do. The realism that they can achieve, somehow makes an ordinary everyday real-life scene look like something so much more.....something beautiful. Looking at your work, even in it's unfinished state, it is very obvious that we are looking at something very special in the making here. It is very inspiring, making even a lazy modeler such as my self, want to spend the extra effort and try to capture the feeling (if not the quality) in their own work.

It really is something special.......