I'm late getting in on this discussion but I worked as a carman at the Norfolk & Western's 38th car shop in Norfolk, Va for several years in the 1970's. We only worked open top hoppers.

The interior of the cars were rusty! The color varied from the brighter orange to the darker brownish orange. The only times we would see bright metal was when the cars were to be light weighed, they were put under the car shaker that would shake off the flaky rust along with any coal dust etc. The bright metal color was a flat medium gray not bright silver.

Another thing about weathering the N&W coal cars that were turned over to dump as was the case at Lamberts Point, the trucks and slope sheets were covered in a layer of oil & coal dust. From talking to the old times this was the norm from at least the early 1930's when pier #4 was put is service.

Jeff Coleman

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@> wrote:

Charles Hostetler wrote:

It took me a couple of days to digest what Clark had done and what
others had observed and suggested and to put together a second try.
I think I made some real progress thanks to the group's observations
and suggestions:

http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2012/04/weathering-hopper-interiors-another-try.html

I'm looking forward to continuing to experiment, and I do appreciate
all of your feedback.

I'd say those hopper interiors look quite good. Congrats on
sticking with it and getting some good results!

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@
Publishers of books on railroad history