Taking stock...

[doctorwayne]

Wayne,

Beautiful work, as always. I am curious. With the lime, would it have been sprayed in such a uniform way? The double decker, it would seem that there would be 2 lines of lime. Like I said, it is beautiful work, and no doubt you looked into this deeply, I am looking to learn. Can you shed some insight on the lime application process for the prototype?

Matt

Thanks for the kind words, Matt.

Actually, not only would it seem that I didn't look into this very deeply, but that I also didn't pay much attention to the fact that the double-decked cars were, in fact, double-decked, and that perhaps they should have been sprayed differently.

I did, however, investigate the application of lime, so am able to make a comment or two. Originally, lime was sprayed on the car as a disinfectant. However, the spraying generally made a mess of the car, (as did the travelling livestock) and often obliterated the lettering, too, leading to the application of boards up near the roof eaves for the car's dimensional data and reporting marks. At some point, the railroads decided to paint the lower car sides white, in an effort to tidy-up the appearance, the idea being, I'd guess, that the guy doing the spraying would have a guide as to how high he should spray, resulting, hopefully, in a neater job. (I'd also guess that if the white paint was still fairly white, the spray guy might skimp on the spraying - who'd know the difference?) It must've been a nasty job, though, especially on a windy day.
I've been looking around for info on spraying the double-decked cars and can't find anything useful. I did, however, locate some discussion that indicated that the spraying was done inside the car, which would better explain how it could make a mess of the car's appearance. Incidently, the road was the D&RGW, and while no mention was made of white paint, it does show that those modelling U.S. roads could add some lime weathering effects to their stock cars. Another source mentioned the procedure as outlined by the Chicago stockyards, although the particular page with the details wasn't available unless I felt like parting with some cash.

Wayne