Weathering big tank cars, Part 2

In the preceding post on this topic, I showed two 33,000-gallon LPG tank cars, in the form of HO scale cars by Tangent Models. These are to be weathered for a 1975 layout, making these cars about 10 years old. (The first post about these cars is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/09/weathering-really-big-tank-cars.html .)

Just for a comparison, the 50-foot box cars I weathered earlier for the same layout are models of cars built only a few years before the layout era. Accordingly, they were only give a light overall haze of grime, as in this example.

I weathered the tank cars following my usual procedure (see “Reference pages” linked at top right) using washes of acrylic tube paints. I will begin by showing NATX 32141 (North American Car Corp.), leased to the Murphy Corporation, with a Spur logo. Murphy was a company operating a chain of retail gasoline stations, selling Spur gasoline, and also in the LPG market. 

I decided to weather the two sides a little differently. I wanted to show some streaking, and also some dirt discharge from below the valve bonnet. The first of these is the right side (following the usual rule, to stand at the B end looking at the car, and the right side is on your right). 

On the other side is more dirty streaking below the valve bonnet. Both sides have an overall dirtiness consistent with years in service.

The other car, NCTX 33019, is lettered as leased to the Canadian company Pacific 66, and lettered with the very large “LP GAS” lettering. The reporting mark belongs to North American Car (Canada) Limited. It is white and this color is always challenging to weather well. I decided to allow some “pooling” of dirt at low points. Here is the right side. 

I tried to get a little difference in the streaking and so on for the left side, along with dirt pooling along the lower curves of the tank. I also added some Pan Pastels to get the tone I wanted. 

These large cars are a different challenge from the freight cars I’m used to, and were interesting to deal with.

Tony Thompson