Weathered by Philden Showcase 27

My Pacific National era sugar hopper fleet recently received some attention.

I finally managed to catch up on some weathering that had been waiting for me to complete for my own layout. In this case, the Auscision Models HO scale NSW NGGF sugar hoppers that will typify operations on my NSW North Coast layout.

Having had some of my own photos to work from that I had snapped on a visit to Grafton where the Sunshine Sugar silo stands on the southern banks of the Clarence River, I could carefully copy some of the weathering patterns on these great looking hoppers.

My results were a combination of masking and painting various shaped patches to replicate efforts to paint-over graffiti tags, airbrushing some light rusting to the lid hatches on the top of the wagon, painting the axle journal box covers in appropriate colours, weathering the model in two different shades of grime, adding some burnt black sugar stains just below the walkways and clear coating the model in matte acrylic before finally hitting the completed model with some rub-on dry transfer graffiti made by Busch, followed by an additional coat of clear matte spray. Basically a combination of everything I had outlined in my book Model Railway Weathered Wonders.

I'll write a follow-up post on how I plan to incorporate running these NGGF hoppers in operations on Philden Beach at a later date. Including some prototype snaps I took at Grafton back in the day. For now, here's a look at my NGGF hopper wagons along with some N scale coal hoppers I have listed for sale on eBay, (links below).

The other side of NGGF 35701. Note the painted and weathered axle box journal caps.

The heavily tagged sugar hopper NGGF 35702.

While the rear of NGGF 35702 has had the graffiti patched out.

NGGF 35719 is fighting a losing battle with having the graffiti patched over.

But at least the rear of NGGF 35719 has stayed tag-free.

The same can't be said for NGGF 35763. This is the good side!

This is the other side of NGGF 35763. It was the only hopper I painted the axle journal caps orange.

With the sugar hoppers out of the way, I next turned my attention to the remaining N scale coal hoppers that I had sitting in my study. When Auscision announced that these were available along with teasing us with samples of the NSW 80 Class locomotives, I spirited enough aside to be able to make up a short train. Hoping of course, that I could one day build a small N scale roundy-round layout to run them on. But after having to admit that all of my combined modelling projects had far exceeded my hobby budget, they too became surplus rollingstock in search of a new home. I've now listed them all up on eBay as pairs.

These are N scale NGKF coal hoppers. I have listed them in pairs for sale on eBay.

While this is the NHFF coal hopper variant. Again, I have listed them for sale on eBay in pairs.

Click to view my remaining model train listings.

I've now signed well over 200 of these tiny certificates to go with each model I have sold.

I now have an empty work bench again, and only my small fleet of model locomotives are awaiting a date with the airbrush. It seems that I'm finally caught-up with everything. Until next time...

For my own record...

Models sold 239/263