I've always painted my car trucks, using dull, weathered, oily, or other black paint to cut the plastic shine and weather the trucks. In the past, I've brush painted them, but I came up with an idea today. I took a scrap of wood which was approximately squre and drove two nails into it , about an HO 40' boxcar apart. Then a Dremel took the heads off the nails. Now I can slip trucks over the nails, or a car body, and spray paint it without the dang thing moving from the force of the air. Works like a champ!
Gene
Good idea. I've spent a lifetime making jigs, clamps, holders, whatever it takes to get the job done. Sometimes, years later I see my idea sold commercially for $10. Better patent the 2x4.
Another idea I use for working with trucks, like painting. Take a 1/4 or 5/16 dowel about a foot long, and screw the truck to the dowel.
Cool thread, should get a lot of ideas.
Bob
If it's an empty shell, I use a bent coat hanger, or something similar, with the bottom clamped in the vice that has as many coats of paint as however many models I've painted.
Trucks should be painted the car body colour except, I believe, yellow or orange or grey reefers where they were, I think, painted black.
Nothing looks worse than a boxcar red boxcar sitting on black trucks, especially shiney black trucks. Paint the trucks boxcar red and weather them.
On a freight car, everything metal above the frame was usually painted the same colour as the body which usually means no black brake wheels except on black cars. Paint the brake wheel the same colour as the body. That's another dead giveaway, along with black trucks, of a straight out of the box freight car.
I agree the trucks should not be shiney BLACK.
Bob
My trucks almost always get weathered to the nines, so the paint discussion to me is moot point. Trucks will almost always take a beating, even one or two times out of the yard; dirt, dust, grease, general track sewage take their toll. about the only paint that is obvious after a while is that applied by some little Hitler with a spray can.
One thing I have learned is to paint the trucks and the wheels separately. The wheels look a lot better without that "colour space" as they go round.
Rich