Bev-Bel TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

 Over the years I've acquired four of the Bev-Bel/Athearn TP&W Pullman-Standard covered hoppers: one each of the yellow and gray and two of the red. These cars have remained unbuilt because I've lacked a good way to paint the underbodies, slope sheets, and brake gear - which are all unpainted black plastic - in colors that match the rest of the car. Now that I have an airbrush, I can finally paint the unpainted parts in matching colors and build these cars.

This project seemed like a good choice for a novice airbrusher - all of the parts to be painted are somewhat concealed on the finished model - and I'd also get some experience with attempting to match factory paint. This project was also my first experience with Vallejo Model Air paint. I have a strong preference for water-based paints and, thanks to Testor's, there aren't many water-based model paints besides Vallejo left on the market. 

TP&W 18140 (gray)

I started with the gray car back in April. To my eye, the following paint mix is an excellent match for the Bev-Bel gray:

• 1 part 71.046 Pale Blue Grey
• 1 part 71.276 USAF Light Gray

I thinned the mix 4:1 with Vallejo airbrush thinner and had good results spraying at about 25 psi. I sprayed the paint directly onto the black plastic and I was pleased to get a smooth, opaque coat. I was not pleased, however, at how easily the dried paint flaked off. The minimal handling required to remove the parts from my painting handles and finish assembly of the car resulted in the paint chipping off in several places. It wasn't a big deal to touch up these spots with a brush, but this experience did make me nervous about future projects where I'll want to do multi-color paint schemes with masking. I always wash plastic parts with soap and water prior to painting and don't handle them with my bare hands after washing, so I don't think the issue here was that dirty parts affected the paint adhesion.

TP&W 18102 (yellow)

In July, I moved on to the yellow car. Knowing that the yellow paint wouldn't cover the black plastic very well, I planned to do a white undercoat. My original plan was to just use white Model Air (71.001), but following the gray paint flaking experience and more time spent reading Vallejo's instructions, I decided to use a white primer instead. I used Vallejo Mecha Color white primer (70.640) because that's what my hobby shop had in stock. I didn't thin the primer because Vallejo cautions that thinning their primers degrades some of their qualities, but I had to crank up the air pressure to almost 40 psi to get it to spray well. 

I had a much harder time matching the yellow paint than I did the gray. I initially thought that a 1:1 mix of 71.033 Yellow Ochre and 71.078 Yellow would work, but upon closer comparison to the Bev-Bel paint my mix wasn't "golden" enough. There are very few yellow options in the Model Air line, but fortunately the Vallejo Game Air line has some golden yellows and these paints can be mixed with Model Air. The following mix is the best I could come up with for the Bev-Bel yellow:

• 2 parts 71.033 Model Air Yellow Ochre
• 1 part 71.078 Model Air Yellow
• 1 part 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow

As expected the yellow went on rather transparent and required multiple coats to get an opaque finish. The yellow paint over primer combination produced a much more durable finish than the gray paint directly on plastic, so I will plan to always prime bare plastic before painting with Model Air in the future.

TP&W 18175 (red #1)

I painted the two red cars in October. I painted both of them at the same time but one of them required renumbering so I'll write about that one in a separate post. I used Vallejo's Grey Surface Primer (74.601) on the bare plastic. As with the Mecha Primer, I didn't thin it and had to spray at about 40 psi. The red proved even more difficult to match than the yellow. My method of color matching - brush-painting small patches of various test mixes on the insides of the shell - didn't work very well because the reds are very transparent. The red colors also seemed to get darker as they dried, which further complicated matters. After a good deal of experimenting, the best match I could come up with was:

• 4 parts 71.003 Red
• 1 part 71.086 Light Red

This mix looked too orange when I first sprayed it onto the model, but it got redder as it dried and I was pleased with the final result.

Stay tuned for a future post about how I renumbered the second of the red hoppers.

Accurail TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

Accurail released kits for TP&W Pullman-Standard 4,750 cubic-foot covered hoppers in 2019. These kits represent cars from a series of 30 built in February 1974 and numbered 18151-18180. The Accurail car is only available in one number, 18164, but a decal set of additional numbers is available from Accurail. I purchased 3 of these cars and the decal set soon after they became available.

After assembling one of the kits in January of this year (pictured above), I'd have to say that I was a bit disappointed overall. The finished car looks good detail-wise and the lettering is good, but its maroon color is too dark compared to the prototype cars, which were painted the same red-orange as other 1970s-era TP&W equipment. In addition, assembly was quite a bit more difficult than other Accurail cars, though to be fair covered hoppers are much more complex than boxcars. I wasn't too eager to assemble the other two kits after my experience with the first one so I waited several months until now. I learned from my mistakes the first time around and things went more smoothly this time.

Coupler Height

The cars come with scale 33"-diameter wheels, while the prototype cars have 36"-diameter wheels. Replacing the stock wheels with scale 36" wheels is trivial; however, the coupler height was borderline too high with the 33" wheels so using the larger wheels would make the coupler height even worse. Initially I decided to live with 33" wheels on TP&W 18164. 3 inches in HO scale is only about 1/32 inch in 1:1 scale and I didn't think the difference would be very noticeable, but my eyes weren't fooled. 

33"-diameter wheels on TP&W 18164 (left) and 36"-diameter wheels on ITC 1735 (right)

It's typically much easier to shim up cars to correct low couplers than it is to lower couplers that are too high, but luckily the Accurail coupler box design makes it easy to add a shim above the coupler to lower it. I made my shims out of 0.010"-thick styrene and attached them to the underframe with double-sided tape as shown below. I drilled a #43 hole in each shim to clear the coupler box screw.

The coupler boxes fit too tightly over the underframe and require filing/scraping of their inside edges. The instructions do warn that some paint may need to be scraped off of the coupler boxes to ensure a proper fit, but I found that I needed to remove some plastic too.

Here's the 18164 with 36" wheels and no coupler shim. Coupler is too high. 

With the coupler shim in place, now the coupler height is perfect.

Bolsters

On most HO scale freight cars, the bolsters to which the trucks are mounted are cast into the underframe or floor. On the Accurail PS 4750 as shown below, the bolsters are separate pieces that must be attached to the underframe.

The separate bolsters wouldn't be a bad thing if it weren't so easy to mount them off-kilter. I found this out the hard way when I assembled the first kit back in January. I managed to attach one of the bolsters a bit crooked, and the car simply wouldn't stay on the track on its inaugural run on the layout. I was glad I had used cyanoacrylate glue to attach the bolsters, so it wasn't difficult to pop off the bad one and try again. In my opinion, the bolster pieces could be substantially improved by adding raised tabs on their top sides that key into the underframe and ensure proper alignment.

When I assembled the other two kits, I used a #50 drill bit as a guide to ensure that the hole in the bolster piece was aligned with the hole in the underframe. Slow-setting cyanoacrylate gel allows enough working time to tweak the alignment. This time around I had no issues with bolster alignment.

Renumbering

The image below shows the contents of Accurail's renumbering decal set for these cars. The large numbers are for the car sides and the small numbers are for the ends.

I decided to renumber my cars to 18162 and 18167 so I would only have to change one digit on the car sides. Most Accurail cars have a very flat finish that does not promote decal adhesion. The finish on these covered hoppers has a bit more of a sheen than other Accurail cars, but I still thought a gloss coat would be a good idea. I applied masking tape to all but the immediate areas around the numbers and gave the cars a couple of light coats of Testor's Glosscote from a spray can. The masking was tedious and felt like overkill, but I haven't forgotten that I once ruined the finish on an entire locomotive with a bad can of Glosscote when I only needed to coat a couple of small areas, so the masking is insurance against that happening again.

My original plan was to apply the decals with the masking still in place so I wouldn't have to mask again for the final flat finish, but I didn't leave myself much room to maneuver the decals and the tape soaked up the decal setting solutions so I had to remove some of the tape right around the numbers. 

On the car sides I only applied "2" and "7" decals over the "4". Because the numbers on the ends are much smaller, I applied decals for the full car numbers over the factory-printed number. Experience with these Accurail decals has taught me to use fresh knife blades and make many light passes when cutting out the numbers to prevent flaking paint and jagged edges. For setting solution, I used Microscale Micro Sol. Once the decals were dry, I re-masked around them and sealed them with a couple of light coats of Testor's Dullcote.

The decal numbers aren't as opaque white as the factory-printed numbers, but you have to look closely to notice this. The finished cars are shown below.