TGN/NTO Gunderson 6269 CUFT Boxcars - 1st Batch

TGN 527193 - NTO 527565 - NTO 527748

Three 50-foot High Cube boxcars were released from the Meridian Speedway paint shop today.  This project was over a year in the making.  A recent reminder and prompting by Greg McComas and Matt Martin got things underway!

Greg had interchanged an older E&C shops version of this car in BN green for repainting to NT&O for operation on his own Michigan Interstate railroad.  Not having made decals for this type of car, the project was slow to get off the ground.  Then ExactRail released their version of the Gunderson 6269 cuft boxcar in November, 2017.  Now it was time to get serious!

I designed a number of paint schemes and put them up to a vote on the FaceBook Freelance Model Railroads Page.  There were many great thoughts, but the ultimate vote was for the scheme released from the paint shop today.

Previous T&GN and NT&O rolling stock sported the classic logos worn on the green-and-white locomotives.  I was concerned that these logos would not look good over the vertical ribs on these cars so there was a need for a new look.  The winning design sports an new, simple image with very large italicized letters between two horizontal lines. 

In addition to the E&C Shops car belonging to Greg McComas, this batch included two ExactRail Gunderson 6269 cars.  Both were purchased as model EE-1452-1 decorated for BNSF.  I chose this model because they were brown and would not need a coat of primer.  The lettering was also pretty sparse and looked easy to remove.

I created a rather detailed spec-sheet for the decals and submitted it to Circus City decals.  They (Matthew Welke) did an amazing job on the decal sheet, and it was done very quickly!

Next I made a quick revision to the roster.  These cars were in the 527000 series, with the first 500 being T&GN and the second 500 being NT&O.  I divided the numbers further, designating the E&C Shops cars as TGN 527000-527099 and NTO 527500-527599.  The ExactRail cars would fill the rest of the numbers, TGN 527100-527499 and NTO 527600-NTO 527999.

The BNSF markings came off easily using Solvaset-Soaked paper towel patches to soften the letters.  Scotch-Tape then removed them cleanly! I mixed a 50/50 batch of Scalecoat II Boxcar Red and Boxcar Red #2 which is standard for these cars.  The paint went on smoothly with my Iwata Revolution airbrush.  

The Circus City decals were a pleasure to work with.  Each car has a total of 58 individual decals!  

Today the cars received dull coat to seal the decals.  On the advise of Eric Goodman I used an aerosol can of Krylon ColorMaster Flat Crystal Clear.  I picked up a can at WalMart!  Being careful to just spray a very thin and even layer of the product on the cars, the result is very good!  I do miss the Floquil flat finish however....

NTO 527565 will be interchanged to the MCIS soon.  As Greg models a later time period than I do, this car will be updated with yellow FRA conspicuity stripes. 

​A shipment from ExactRail arrived on Monday.  Included were four more copies of BNSF 726653...  Batch 2 will be making its way to the paint booth soon!

​Chris