A cracking bit of weathering...

[PhilH]

...12" to the foot style.

[TomE]

That must have been a big bag of weathering powder!

 

Tom.

[shortliner]

.....and if you had one like that on your railroad, there would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes and beating of breasts, accompanied by cries of " Thats much too heavy !" and "It's not prototypical !"

[doctor quinn]

Absolutely Jack, particularly as the engine is supposed to be light grey! (Look on the top of the short hood where the crew's jackets or kit has rubbed the dirt off)

 

All the best

 

Nick

[garethashenden]

Can anyone identify the fright car to the left? Looks almost like a Seaboard top and TTX flatcar bottom...

[Talltim]

Is it a flatcar on the track nearer than the one the boxcar is on?

[trisonic]

An excess of "Coal Dust", I'd say - I bet if it ran through a (typical) American Thunderstorm most of it would run off.

 

Best, Pete.

[pH]

The Clinchfield carried a lot of coal through very hilly country, with many tunnels. So lots of diesel smoke, coal dust and brake dust - with the results shown in the picture in PhilH's post.

 

Here's a few more:

 

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=417006&nseq=53

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=277910&nseq=140

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=100650&nseq=186

[JWB]

This has some application to weathering generally -- equipment that regularly ran through tunnels got blackened unless it was washed. Pacific Fruit Express, for instance, couldn't get out of California without going through tunnels, and if it went on the PRR or B&O, it went through more on the way east. At least through the 1930s, PFE washed reefers at Roseville; after World War II, it discontinued washing the whole reefer and squeegeed just the reporting marks and number instead. There are also surprises, Chicago Great Western had a couple of tunnels in western Illinois, and its equipment got just as dirty. A model of a PFE reefer block should have some cars very dirty, others with numbers and so forth squeegeed.

[Dr. John]

Can anyone identify the fright car to the left? Looks almost like a Seaboard top and TTX flatcar bottom...

Two separate freight cars - Seaboard Coast Line waffle-side 50' box car with a flat car (probably TTX leasing) in the foreground. Also note the green Seaboard Air Line box car to the right (predecessor to the SCL).

 

And yes, whoever did the weathering on the GP-38 had a heavy hand.

[CraigZ]

Classic Clinchfield appearance though a bit more extreme than typically seen - the Clinchfield took good care of its locomotives.  As noted, many tunnels and hauling primarily coal out of the Appalachian coal fields and still an important north-south connector for CSX.  Gorgeous to railfan, too...last big trip I made up there was in 2000 (!) with the Copper Creek viaduct (north of Gate City, VA) being a neat place to shoot.  The lower track is ex Southern now NS thru Natural Tunnel and, I think, up to Bulls Gap.  It's a much older railroad and where the Clinchfield went thru or over mountains and valleys, the Southern mostly stayed in the valleys.

 

[clark33]

Here's a PFE car in 1963.