Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Modeling Ideas From Emery Gulash

I have a lot of the late Emery Gulash's archival 16mm railfan film on DVD from Green Frog. (Gulash has some material on DVDs from other producers as well, but most is on Green Frog.)

There are lots of features in his film that are inspirational for modelers. They include the fact that he keeps the camera running after the locos go by, so you get good views of the cars in the trains. Also, he frequently shoots from bridges or hillsides, so you get something of a modeler's eye view of trains, which means you get to see the weathering on the tops of the cars.

One thing I've taken away from his films is that by the 1960s, when I started seriously railfanning and the era which inspires a lot of my modeling, the paint had worn off the roofs of many freight cars -- although some roads painted the roofs silver. A few trips through tunnels and it would be hard to tell the difference. I would say that in Gulash films, about half the roofs visible are bare metal (or painted silver). Thus I've followed up and weathered the roofs of many cars, especially the Accurails, which take well to small improvements.

I've noticed that the Model Railroader staff sometimes does this on cars they use on the MR&T or project layouts, but so far, they haven't pointed it out. I think it adds a lot to a fleet with relatively small effort. (I use an airbrush with a mix of silver and light gray to simulate galvanized metsl.)

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