Rob,

I have been looking for color photos of any B&O brown boxcar for years, along with others, and they are pretty limited. I skipped some steps in my weathering process, like the reweigh/repack changes, chalk marks, etc. to jump ahead and see what I could do with the basic color. I did paint some gray spots on the roof for paint failure (they show how red I had to make the overspray) and the “metal” parts were given a black pin wash. 

I used my standard matte varnish (https://bomodeling.com/2020/04/30/developing-my-painting-and-decaling-techniques-for-ho-scale-freight-cars/  ) with a few drops of Vallejo Red Brown and Vallejo Fire Red to get the color to shift. I think that’s how the color wheel works, to change a green (blue and yellow mixed) use more red to shift the color away from green. I think it came pretty close to a brown I can weather and darken to look good in my fleet. 

The photos attached are all taken under 5000k LED lights (layout and paint booth). I had to add two coats and the overspray was very pink  While still wet, I used a wet microbrush to wipe the pink overspray from the lettering as it was way too pink to look appropriate. This caused some blotching I hope to cover with some dirt and soot in further weathering  I hit it with untinted, clear matte as a last coat while still wet to try to cover the blotching.

See what you think, for me it’s very close color match to the M-53 I photographed it next to in an earlier photo and in the paint booth. At this post I’ll call it a save and move on. Lemons, make lemonade. Please share what you are able to do with your OD Green boxcar.

Bruce D. Griffin
Ashland, MD
https://bomodeling.com/blog/