M.O.W. boxcar scene (part 2)

On my layout, the boxcar was left at the end of the siding and neglected. Over time, the trucks and rails rusted away and the boxcar was in danger of collapse until they put strong wooden cribbing made from old railroad ties under the ends. Then, the Maintenance of Way crews repurposed it as their storage shed and hangout place.

To make everything line up height wise, I glued down a strip of cork roadbed leading from the switch to the boxcar shed area. The next day I took the track outside and sprayed it with my standard Rustoleum camo brown paint, and finished that up by brush painting the rails Tamiya brown.

Though probably overkill, I ran a feeder to each outside rail as well as the middle one. The middle rail is isolated for this siding in case I want to park an engine (at least that was the plan when I designed the layout), and though I might not do that anymore it made sense to wire it that way. Thankfully, I remembered to remove the middle metal rail joining pin before gluing the track down.

The ties were painted various shades of brown and gray, and then drybrushed with black. This made them look like wood that had aged at different rates. 

The boxcar and base were then attached to the layout with caulk and left to dry for a couple of days.

A couple of days later, I lightly ballasted the track with cinders. Then, a healthy dose of dirt and ground foam were applied to the track. My plan is to leave space at the end to park a car permantently in place, and also leave space for another car to be spotted on occasion while still maintaining clearance of the road crossing.

This part is always painful, though the brown paint mixed in the glue makes it look especially bad. I have learned to simply walk away and just let it do its thing overnight. Naturally, a hole in the benchwork leaked while I wasn't looking but I caught it in time. I had caulked the hole, but not good enough apparently.

A day or so later, I mixed up ground goop and applied it in front all around the boxcar. I tried something new by first putting blue tape over the area I didn't want goop, and then spreading the stuff down. And viola, peeling back the tape produced exactly what I wanted! Why had I never done this before?

More dirt and scenery materials were applied.

I still wasn't happy about the last foot of track so I really buried it in dirt and weeds to really set the scene that it is overgrown.

But something wasn't right until I painted the tops of the rails brown to reflect that it hasn't been run over in ages. 

I left an open area in front of the boxcar so crews can easily get in and out without tripping. OSHA, you know. Then, I added some details nearby like a stack of newly creosoted ties cut from stripwood. They are not "scale" size but instead match the width of the Gargraves track ties that I used on my layout. I also included a pile of code 125 rusty tie plates on a pallet. These are 3D printed items from Ebay. A stack of joint bars was placed nearby too.

A rail storage rack was also built. I used code 215 rail that had been gifted to me by a friend who used it for G-scale trains, but rail is rail. Something smaller like code 148 is typically used in O scale (and that represents heavy rail in the prototype world) but Gargraves track uses rail that is equivalent to code 230 so what I used is actually slightly smaller. But it had the right profile. I painted it rusty brown and lightly sprayed it with flat brown. Some smaller pieces have fallen by the wayside. 

Some metal barrels are more 3D printed items that I painted and lightly weathered. I looked online for photos as reference and saw that they came in lots of color variations, so I painted them many different ways. If I put them together in one area they would look out of place, but a few of the rusty brown were located next to the boxcar. The green ones with the white lid will be used by Northeast Chemical. The others... into the parts box for future use. By the way, they are all the same size even though the picture makes them look different.

I took a plastic barrel that I got somewhere and filled it with HO scale track spikes that I had on hand. They are oversize for O scale, but true 1:48 spikes likely wouldn't be very visible. 

The Fairmont Speeder model fit right into the scene parked at the end of the track. A nice old hopper or boxcar or flatcar in maintenance of way service would be perfect to abandon next to it.

As previously mentioned, my Autumn scenery initiative hit this area too. Lots of the large green ground foam bushes were removed, and some fine ground foam and dead grass (Like Like earth) was added. Then, some of my colored lichen bushes were added.

I still need to add a few more details which I hopefully will find as train show season starts. It is a lot easier, and cheaper, to find them there then to purchase them individually on Ebay.