Weathered by Philden Showcase 20

This latest batch of Weathered by Philden models is being listed on eBay this evening. Regular readers of my blog get first notice before they go live, as my last batch of GY wagons were all snapped up immediately by the one person. This time I’ve weathered 2 boxes of Auscision Models NGPF grain hoppers in the modern scheme with ground operated lids and walkways removed. One pack has the white Freight Rail Grain logos while the other has the blue Freightcorp logos.

I’ve copied the weathering pattern on these wagons from real life examples, with a mixture of painted over graffiti patches in various grey shades. The white dots along the top of the wagons resemble the locations where the roof walk supports have had primer painted around them following the removal of the mesh walkway treads. While the journal boxes were painted either orange or lavender as per some prototype examples I had seen.

You may have remembered that these grain hoppers were originally bought for my inner-Melbourne Philden Street Yard layout late last year, and I did a short YouTube video when they first arrived.

As there’s no room for these on my NSW North Coast layout, I now need to move these on to be able to replace them with a set of the NGGF sugar hopper variants as they run through to Grafton on the North Coast line. I’m quite pleased with how the weathering turned out on these. No two look the same, so here are some side-on shots for comparison.

The other side of Freight Rail 36021-P, (shown at top), with the journal boxes painted orange.

Freight Rail 36073-E with the journal boxes painted lavender.

Freightcorp 35955-R with orange journal box covers and a bit of a graffiti squiggle on the side.

Freightcorp 36038-R with lavender journal box covers.

Freightcorp 36080-X with a worn-out logo and lavender journal boxes.

A heavily weathered Freight Rail 35992-W with lavender journal boxes.

Freightcorp 35915-X with an almost worn-off logo and orange journal boxes.

I’m going to try and weather a small batch of models each week as I work around readying my layout for two shows at the end of the month. There are still a few Victorian Railways models waiting for me to grime up and move on after my big layout change back in January, and a couple of more recent additions that I’ve deemed a bit too long for my bookshelf layout now that I’m getting stuck into some operating sessions and discovering what models suit the layout and what don’t, but more on that to follow later.