A few years back my brother got hold of a couple of Kadee 40ft boxcars, and I weathered one. It was ok but not really one that I could get enthused about, so I tried doing a patched out livery. That made it worse, so onto the shelf of doom it went. In 2012 a trip to the Near North allowed me to visit a couple of Canadian hobby stores, and thinking of this car, and getting a souvenir that could pack easily I bought a set of water slide decals, and they joined the car on the shelf of doom!

So, six years (yesterday) later, I’m rummaging through the mancave and this gets in the way. I realised it’s one of those ‘one day’ jobs, and thought why not today? Well the car side had been cleaned of the patching paint, the original livery, the details such as ladders and walkways, and I sat down in the sun, with cotton buds and T-Cut to polish the sides for the decals. You can see above the high gloss finish the T-Cut achieved so with Microscale decal setting solutions it all looked a reasonably quick job.

I’m pleased to say that the high gloss finish and the decals and solutions all worked well you can see above how the solutions help the decals adhere to the surface, with no silvering. A couple of weeks back I tried out an aerosol can of Humbrol acrylic matt varnish and was really pleased with the quality of it. It seemed a good option to try it out on this HO car as I’d used quite a bit of it on six 7mm/O Gauge wagons and the can feels quite a bit emptier, I’d received a couple of comments regarding the spray getting blotchy as the can pressure reduced and it seemed a good idea to see if I got the same experience. I’m pleased to say, so far, I haven’t and the final top coat of varnish is seen below.

The result being a nice addition to the small HO fleet of stock I’m building up, a fast job that I’d put off for far too long which has literally transformed this cars appearance, and means it goes straight into the operating fleet. It’s also excellent motivation to get a fast result, and the shelf of doom has one less occupant!