Sample Image in HO Scale TEST ONLY

The Fn3 railroad is no more.

Sorry to say that an injury and the economy have forced me to get rid of the Fn3 equipment a while back. I leave the blog only as a memory and for  the article on weathering the plastic flat car deck.

Thank You.

First Project of 2009

The first Fn thing I have tackled for a while was just a little quickie project to get my feet wet, so to speak. It has been years since the 1:20.3 items have seen the light of day; so long I had considered selling all of it off. It was getting it all out for display that forced me to see the error of that kind of thinking. I had just purchased a Bachmann flat car for...for...well because it was on sale and I wanted to look one over; that's what for. I have to admit that is a very nice item and will probably become the mainstay flat of my private empire.

Looking at the bright and shiny car was not too bad, but that pristine deck just had to go! If only the painted plastic deck was removable like their first 1:22.5 flats of many years ago; but that would have been too easy. Adding wood would have made it too thick for my tastes, so I tried my hand at painting the deck with a wood color acrylic. That was a little bit better, but not up to my ideas of a beat up looking deck yet. I weathered the deck with a mix of washes and weathering powders from A.I.M. Products. Not perfect, but a whole lot better until I can find something to use as a load on this car. If nothing else, it no longer looks like plastic; now there is a little character.

The majority of the time spent was in waiting for the paint to dry; everything was applied by paint brush. It was just using layers of colors and sometimes removing them which rendered this look.

Below is the final result, after waiting and thinking for a week, I figured there needed to be better definition between each board, so taking advantage of the dark base color I carefully used an X-Acto saw blade to open the groves between boards by removing the paint I had applied. Using the toothed end of the thin, fine toothed blade, I noticed it just fit the groove perfectly and took off paint a little cleaner, tending not to 'walk' out of the groove like an X-Acto knife blade did. I also yanked off the supplied knuckle couplers and added KD 830's which fit perfectly, without any modifications at all. The results are definitely something that looks better than the car does when first taken out of the box; I can live with these...and they don't warp.