SP F-70-10 New Deck Color? New Evidence!

There's been debate about the proper color of the new decking of the SP F-70-10s.  Without good color photos of their construction, it's been impossible to determine.... until now!

New Evidence!

I was watching SP Railway: Behind the Scenes 1950s Educational Documentary WDTVLIVE42 video and found the section starting at 5:08 with assembly of wheels and trucks, then moving to the construction of the bodies and ending at 7:22 with the decking of the new F-70-10 flatcars in Dec, 1953 and into 1954.

SP Railway: Behind the Scenes 1950s video, time index 7:03

In these photos the brown wood colors show a bit more.

SP Railway: Behind the Scenes 1950s video, time index 7:13

It appears that the boards are dark, but also have some brown color still in them.

SP Railway: Behind the Scenes 1950s video, time index 7:18

However, on this car the board look VERY dark, and even shining black spots, which does suggest creosote.  So let's see what I can do with the RedCaboose/SPHTS F-70-10 model decks.

The Model

I want to model my cars on my Owenyo Branch layout for 1954 at the latest, so these cars will be the newest of all the cars I plan to model.  Certainly if I was modeling 3-10 years later the other deck weathering techniques I've shown on my assortment of F-50-series OwlMtModels flats come into play.

RedCaboose/SPHTS F-70-10 with some light weathering on the 'straw' color molded deck.

I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on my deck prep and basic weathering.  This is going to be an interesting weathering, or I should say, non-weathering of the deck to make it look like a first year deck.

Kitbashed F-70-10 deck (top) and new tooled deck (bottom)

I did some light scuffing with some sanding stick to give a bit of 'tooth' to the deck to hold the washed paint.  The first color used is AppleBarrel acrylic paint (21490E) Pavement, and then a thinned wash of (21985E) Black.  A bit of (20511E) Brown Oxide was mixed into the last wash of Pavement and Black to shift the deck color towards the brown side.  At this point, I'm setting the deck aside to fully dry for several hours.

SP 142617's updated deck finish with more black and patches of gloss per film clip.

I came back and add a little bit more brown and black streaking on parts of the boards.

Next is a shot of clear-coat to seal the existing colors down before a final black wash for the boards.

In Closing

Hopefully this info is useful for those of us modeling F-70-10 class flatcars.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Kitbashing OwlMtModels (Part 4) F-50-Series Decks - Link to Deck Distressing and Weathering video.