Excellent! Thanks for showing everyone that upgrades can be simple, cost-effective, fun, satisfying, attainable, performance-enhancing, and realism-enhancing. AND all in one video! Amazing! Time very well spent for the best hobby in the world! Inspirational and inspirationally shared too! Tony Koester talked about this for encouraging new modelers in an MR editorial ages ago - inspiration and NOT intimidation! Please keep up the great videos!!!
Wow! That is incredibly high praise. Thanks for the feedback - and thanks for watching! BTW if you go to the posts tab on my home page and scroll down, you'll see a survey showing that 80% of respondents preferred the appearance of Grimy Black on the wheels versus rust. I have to confess I prefer it too, and I have since switched to Grimy Black.
Another well-done, concise how-to video on the complete sequence to produce a prototypical appearing freight truck. Thanks for sharing your process and choice of materials with us.
I have a lot of old rolling stock that I boxed up as a kid. I need to do a lot of tune-up work on my rolling stock to get my layout up and running smoothly. This video and your Breathe New Life into Old Freight Cars are invaluable to me. Thank you for taking the time to share.
One difficulty that I did NOT address in that video is replacing truck-mounted couplers. I plan a short video sometime explaining how to replace these with body mounted couplers and improving the truck mounts. Stay tuned!
You're welcome! You'll find that painting one pair of trucks at a time is a painfully slow process, but painting 10 or 20 pair at once goes pretty quickly.
Absolutely. As I mentioned in the video description, Model Master acrylic paints are no longer in production, so you'll have to find suitable substitutes.
Keep those plastic wheel sets for loads on gondolas or flatcars. Seems I can't seem to throw those away. I've got an old pint can of Rust-O-Leum rusty metal primer that I use for my wheels. It really looks like old rust & is lacquer based. It holds women's eye make up really well (I use it instead of weathering powders 'cause I get it from the dollar store). Cheers from eastern TN
Nice, clear video with good tips, thanks. I like your truck-holder a lot better than the one I made 20+ years ago. Time to upgrade it. Do you do any painting on the back of your wheels or axles?
No, I never bothered to paint the axles or the backs of the wheels. They're not noticeable, and I fear that painting them might make them stand out more, rather than less.
Do you do any prep work on the Accurail Delrin plastic truck frames? I've found the occasional Accurail truck frame with some flash that needs removal, but not near as bad as the older Athearn BB DElrin truck frames. I've read that some modelers grit-blast the Delrin to get better paint adhesion. Maybe that step isn't necessary by using the rattle can spray red primer as the base color for the frames.
I've never done any extra prep, and the Painter's Touch 2X adheres very well. I've not tried any other primer - I got lucky on the first go! I have tried using a truck tuner on the axle pockets, but I've never seen any improvement in performance as a result.
@@rwissbaum9849 The only time the truck tuner helps in my view is if the wheelset axle is too long for the truck frame. In that case, I inwardly squeeze xtra hard on the journal boxes while twirling the tuner. This makes the conical "hole" in the journal boxes a little deeper & I can usually get the "was too-long" axle to slip into place & spin w/o any detectable friction slowing down its spinning.
Absolutely! Making them all the same will defeat the purpose. I would suggest, though, that the variations should be subtle - freight cars traveling across Oklahoma will pick up a lot of red dirt, so if you're modeling an Oklahoma-based railroad, the trucks (and cars) should reflect this. Cars on interchange service - for example, a Pennsy freight car on my Rio Grande layout - would be expected to differ from the others. THAT'S getting pretty detail-oriented, but that can add to the fun of model railroading.
Excellent! Thanks for showing everyone that upgrades can be simple, cost-effective, fun, satisfying, attainable, performance-enhancing, and realism-enhancing. AND all in one video! Amazing! Time very well spent for the best hobby in the world! Inspirational and inspirationally shared too! Tony Koester talked about this for encouraging new modelers in an MR editorial ages ago - inspiration and NOT intimidation! Please keep up the great videos!!!
Wow! That is incredibly high praise. Thanks for the feedback - and thanks for watching!
BTW if you go to the posts tab on my home page and scroll down, you'll see a survey showing that 80% of respondents preferred the appearance of Grimy Black on the wheels versus rust. I have to confess I prefer it too, and I have since switched to Grimy Black.
Another well-done, concise how-to video on the complete sequence to produce a prototypical appearing freight truck. Thanks for sharing your process and choice of materials with us.
I have a lot of old rolling stock that I boxed up as a kid. I need to do a lot of tune-up work on my rolling stock to get my layout up and running smoothly. This video and your Breathe New Life into Old Freight Cars are invaluable to me. Thank you for taking the time to share.
One difficulty that I did NOT address in that video is replacing truck-mounted couplers. I plan a short video sometime explaining how to replace these with body mounted couplers and improving the truck mounts. Stay tuned!
Good video--thanks
Thank you for your video I was going to do that to start painting my trucks on my rolling stock thank you thank you very much
You're welcome! You'll find that painting one pair of trucks at a time is a painfully slow process, but painting 10 or 20 pair at once goes pretty quickly.
Thanks for this video. Of course there are possible variations on the colors used.
Absolutely. As I mentioned in the video description, Model Master acrylic paints are no longer in production, so you'll have to find suitable substitutes.
Good video, like
Спасибо
good tips. Thanks
Keep those plastic wheel sets for loads on gondolas or flatcars. Seems I can't seem to throw those away. I've got an old pint can of Rust-O-Leum rusty metal primer that I use for my wheels. It really looks like old rust & is lacquer based. It holds women's eye make up really well (I use it instead of weathering powders 'cause I get it from the dollar store). Cheers from eastern TN
Absolutely! But first, please *please* cut off those pointed axle tips!
Nice, clear video with good tips, thanks. I like your truck-holder a lot better than the one I made 20+ years ago. Time to upgrade it. Do you do any painting on the back of your wheels or axles?
No, I never bothered to paint the axles or the backs of the wheels. They're not noticeable, and I fear that painting them might make them stand out more, rather than less.
@@rwissbaum9849 Cool, thanks.
Do you do any prep work on the Accurail Delrin plastic truck frames? I've found the occasional Accurail truck frame with some flash that needs removal, but not near as bad as the older Athearn BB DElrin truck frames.
I've read that some modelers grit-blast the Delrin to get better paint adhesion. Maybe that step isn't necessary by using the rattle can spray red primer as the base color for the frames.
I've never done any extra prep, and the Painter's Touch 2X adheres very well. I've not tried any other primer - I got lucky on the first go!
I have tried using a truck tuner on the axle pockets, but I've never seen any improvement in performance as a result.
@@rwissbaum9849 The only time the truck tuner helps in my view is if the wheelset axle is too long for the truck frame. In that case, I inwardly squeeze xtra hard on the journal boxes while twirling the tuner. This makes the conical "hole" in the journal boxes a little deeper & I can usually get the "was too-long" axle to slip into place & spin w/o any detectable friction slowing down its spinning.
Actually, even the result are very fine, there are possibility to vary slightly from car to car.
Absolutely! Making them all the same will defeat the purpose. I would suggest, though, that the variations should be subtle - freight cars traveling across Oklahoma will pick up a lot of red dirt, so if you're modeling an Oklahoma-based railroad, the trucks (and cars) should reflect this. Cars on interchange service - for example, a Pennsy freight car on my Rio Grande layout - would be expected to differ from the others. THAT'S getting pretty detail-oriented, but that can add to the fun of model railroading.
@@rwissbaum9849 Thanks for the feedback. Yes, this called FUN. I am in southern California, and we have a lot of dust. Sand color is dominant.