Big Blue has inspired some purchases

[TMo]

This afternoon was spent with paintbrushes, decals, makeup brushes, and washes to suitably (or maybe unsuitably for many people's taste) weather these two boxcars.  (Yeah, the rust treatment on the un-patched Reading unit is probably on the excessive side - but I'll give it a few days and I can always tone it down). They now fit in quite well with my Conrail consist of covered hoppers and boxcars.  I couldn't find an exact equivalent (turns out it's a Reading RBLa (modified and stretched 40' XMy) for the patched-out unit, so I made up a Conrail number for this car (230635) and decaled it accordingly. 

   

I think that does it for the boxcars in that box.  The two that remain aren't worth much time or effort.  

There are three 2-bay Reading hopper cars that just need couplers which will leave me with 1 gondola and 4 more hoppers (1 Tyco, some Life Like, a couple of unknowns), none of which deserve much more than a bargain bin ebay sale.  All in all, the projects that I got out to the box have been a good Christmas vacation deviation from normal.