We have been experimenting with PVC plastic for car siding for almost ten years. We use it for the board and batten cars as well as the tongue and groove siding. My daughter the architect and I went to an 18th century timber framing seminar in Deerfield, Mass. last weekend. It was interesting to hear some of the complaints about the unavailability of good wood. I read somewhere in a historical periodical that railroad car builders were complaining in 1900 that they just could not get good wood for the side sills of passenger cars. They ought to see what is out there now. Any way you slice it, wood comparable in durability to that which was available in 1900 is unobtainium.

Paint is the second reason for trying plastic siding. Paint, like everything else that had lead removed, just isn't as reliable. We have had paint over the years that worked very well until they were forced to change the formula for one reason or another. Then we had to find another paint. The acrylic enamel paint we started using several years ago has the best color retention to date, but it doesn't like wood as much as plastic.

While plastic seems like cheating, construction is the same as it is for wood. From what I have seen plastic is no more different from old wood than the new wood that is available. You can't beat wood from a 200 year old tree. 12 year old trees with half inch growth rings just doesn't cut it.

Agreed. While it can be argued that the most authentic restoration would use the original materials, the wood and paints available today are no more authentic than substituting plastic for the wood siding, so long as the form and function of the siding are preserved. Many (too many) cars in both museums and preservation railways are destined to spend their lives out doors, and a car displayed with rotten siding is no more authentic that one where this substitution has been made.

I had written a bit here after finding a plastic beaded ceiling pattern a couple years ago that looked very suitable. Sorry I forget the name (the samples are still on my desk at home, shows how often I clean my desk) but as I recall, the material was 9/16" thick, and had V grooves on the otherwise smooth backside; perfect for car siding. This was individuate strips with T&G edges, NOT large panels with faux grooves, and one variety was 3-1/8" wide; an almost perfect replacement for the ARA pattern 3-1/4" wide car siding. The other variety was 5-1/8" wide, but would need the center grove added to replicate the ARA 5-1/4" pattern siding.

One thing that has put me off from making a blanket recommendation of this material is the manufacturer's warning that painting their material dark colors could cause buckling due to the increased thermal expansion relative to the wood substrate. Linn, have you experience any problem with this? Care to elaborate on your instillation procedure?

ON EDIT:

Looked at my samples last night. The trade name of the material is Versatex:
http://www.versatex.com/beadboard-products.php

I also find my memory of dimensions is abysmal, The bead board material is 1/2" thick, and the face widths are 3-5/16" and 5-5/16" for the profiles described as 1/2 X 3-1/2 and 1/2 X 5-1/2 respectively.

I had always sort of had a gut feeling that the siding on Strasburg's coaches was something other then wood; it just didn't feel like wood to me.

In 1984 I purchased from the AT&SF Railway Co. their freight depot at San Saba, Texas, and moved it to 9120 Highway 290 West, on the West side of Austin, TX. It has been leased to a Purina Feed Store ever since, you can see it on Google street view. In 1987 over Thanksgiving weekend I decided the old wood floor needed to be refininshed, and I used pure "Watco" oil, applying with rags, on hands and knees. It was just beautiful when I finished, and it also smelled fantastic (!). Tight grained long leaf pine from original construction in 1911. Being at that time young and dumb, middle 20s, I stuffed the rags in a trashcan, in the depot, after I was done, and went home (judgment adversely affected by the inhalant?). That night the fire/smoke alarm went off. The firemen on arrival found the trashcan (which had no top) in flames, and the rest of the building would have suffered the same fate but for their intervention. We wound up only with heavy smoke damage, cleanable.

At that time, Watco Oil carried no warning on the can about spontaneous combustion. Not many years after that they changed the label to add a very large print warning. The insurance adjuster told me at the time he had worked a case in which a laborer went home after a day of working with the stuff and shucked his blue jeans onto the floor of his closet, and his wife came by an hour later and found them smoking.

The approach I now use with these kinds of oil treatments when done is to take the used rags, put them in a large ziplock bag, add enough water to wet them thoroughly, then squeeze out the air and ziplock seal the bag. Then put them in the trash can. If only everyone knew, considerable heartache and loss could be avoided. Call it the school of hard knocks, but maybe that is one of the most effective schools...

Jokes about inhalants aside, there is something attractive, but seemingly only to men not women (not my wife, anyway...), about the smells of such chemicals, and others of the allied families, such as WD-40, grease, crude oil, diesel, various solvents, etc. I have seldom seen mention of this in the regular media, but I especially like the smell of old machine shops, and expect many other men do as well. Maybe that is one intangible factor that motivates an interest in railroad preservation.

- William Osborn Austin Texas william[at]texasenergylaw[dotcom]

The IRM have also been experimenting with custom mix of boiled linseed oil and primer. This started when a favorite wood preservative made by PPG went unavailable in Illinois due to high VOCs.
This was the data sheet for it
http://www.menards.com/msds/101588_002.pdf

From that we can see it is essentially mineral spirits and linseed oil.
A place we used to test some paints was the ATSF 1400 caboose as we plan to eventually replace the car siding anyway. The two attached photos show some results.
Brown tint oil based exterior stain, that was also a PPG Weather Seal product also no longer available, was applied to the entire car about 9 years ago. I sprayed two heavy coats to the whole car at that time to stabilize the bare and badly weathered southern pine car siding.
The next year I rolled on a single coat of Thompson's solid color Oil deck and house stain. The “oil” is actually soap and water cleanup latex. But it was available and low cost so as a test we tried it.
I think this is still available and is pretty oily for a latex stain. The brushes do not clean well even with hot water and heavy soap.
The door was taken off, repaired, striped, sanded and given our regular white oil primer and two coats of oil enamel and put back on about two years later.
Our regular source for metal and wood paint is the same Coronado Rust Scat high gloss alkyd enamel in this case tinted to boxcar red.
In the attached photos the car siding next to the door has the 9 year old linseed oil based stain and looks OK. Faded but about the same condition as when sprayed. The door on the other hand exposed for 7 years needs to be repainted
The next photo shows rebuilt windows against the 8 year old water based solid color H2O stain overcoat.
The new windows were primed first with a custom mix of 1 part white primer, one part boiled linseed oil and one part thinner. Let dry a week then regular primer and two coats oil paint.
They have been outside two winters, three summers. The gloss finish on the oil enamel paint has already gone dull. However the 8 year old stain has held up very well, and shows no sign of peeling.

I am becoming a fan of good quality latex exterior paint for wood cars. As long as the wood is first treated with a penetrating oil preservative that will also allow the paint to stick. In this case it actually held up better than our traditional oil based enamel.

As far as spontaneous combustion, YES! Never leave wet rags or brushes Indoors. The only time I saw this was when a covered rag pail had been full of rags used days before for applying an oil finish at a large wood shop. When the cover was lifted to put something else in the fresh air caused a flash and woomp sound that got everybody’s attention. The guy who opened the pail lost his eyebrows and nerve to ever take the cover off again.

In response the comment about thermal expansion, yes we have had problems with it. PVC has a pretty high coefficient of expansion. The longest seamless (glued) piece we have used was for a letter board and it was about 60 feet long. We experienced cracking in the colder months as the material shrank. We are experimenting with a fly ash material which has a very, very low coefficient of expansion. At the moment this material has limited size choices.

For board and batten cars, we use a separate piece of PVC between every batten and allow it to move under the batten by leaving a small gap between the boards. We use an ice/water shield material on the outside of the plywood sub-siding. This stuff really stops the water. For tongue and groove siding, we anchor the material near the belt rail and allow it to expand down for the shorter boards under the sill. For full height boards, we anchor the material near the middle or under the belt rail if there is one, and allow the board to expand up and down by leaving a space in the letter board rabbet. For the window corner molding, we are still fooling around with different materials since this stuff works best if it doesn't expand and contract as much.

One unintended consequence we had with PVC occurred on the parlor car. Because this car is used year round and has food and drink on board, it is heated. In cold weather, the PVC became the moisture barrier and as the heated air hit the inside of the PVC, it condensed. Below the belt rail was not too much of a problem but above, we created pockets or water. We now provide drainage by grooving the back of the PVC material that lies against the water shield material. This seems to have solved the problem.

In answer to the post where the author thought it seemed like we weren't using wood on our cars, Most of the tongue and groove cars are still all wood.

And here, fellow preservationists, is the difference between a "carpenter" and a "craftsman."

I trust that Grand Pooh-Bah Moedinger and his crew understand that my picture commentary was "tongue in cheek," but it is necessary to remind folks that the Strasburg operates a tourist railroad, and the museum is across the street. Those who regard the railroad as the epitome of "preservation" need to be reminded that they've built their first-class cars from scratch, and they're allowed a modicum of experimentation. A scratchbuilt dining car is the perfect test vehicle for the idea that, someday, we may not have enough of the "right" wood to fix the historic equipment, once "junk" trees like the non-native "tree of heaven" push aside native woods in the forests of North America.

Hey, it could be worse. Imagine trying to score teak for restoring old London & North Eastern Railway carriages. Yes, TEAK:
http://www.lnersvrcoachfund.org.uk/teak_set.html

Was wondering what color paint are the strasburgs passanger cars,are they close to
a B&M red or PRR Tuscan??

Back to the linseed oil. One thing that would concern me is mildew.

Back when linseed oil was the common binder for paint, most of the driers and pigments were some form of metal salt or oxide; and most were toxic to some extent, at least to the organisms that cause deterioration. Most of those toxic compounds are no longer available, so what keeps the mildew at bay?

About ten years ago, at the very end of the commercially available oil based paint era, I got completely fed up with the fact that everything I painted with low VOC paint looked like it had been painted with a rake, and I started adding hardware store "boiled" linseed oil to the Sherwin Williams trim paints, and later to some Olympic oil stain. I figured there should be at least some mildewcide in the commercial paint, and that should take care of the added oil. Wrong-O. Within five years the whole house was covered with black streaks, even the steel doors, so the paint was the only thing the mildew could be thriving on. I ended up spending an entire summer scrubbing the house with mildew remover before repainting with the modern Olympic product, which is a water borne acrylic coating. So far it's holding up well enough, but it's only been three or four years.

The fact remains that linseed oil needs something to control the mildew that will feed on it given the chance. I wonder if boric acid would dissolve in it? Boric acid is still legal, and seems to be the main ingredient in Bora-Care, treatment for log homes and cedar shingle roofs. The biggest problem with boric acid is it's water soluble, so will leach out in the rain, but if it's encapsulated in the polymerized oil, perhaps it will stick around for a while.

Linseed oil causes a lot of arguments among Civil War reenactors because of flammability and toxicity issues. In that era, it was commonly used to make the oilcloth of which haversacks were made. Since hardcores carry their rations loose in their haversacks, as the original cast did, the fight over authenticity versus staying alive and unburnt goes on constantly. Food-grade flaxseed oil will do the job and does not have the extra stuff added.
There have indeed been anecdotes about men piling their gear at the edge of camp only to find the center of the heap hot and even smoldering when they returned. Also, oiled tarps, ponchos, haversacks and knapsacks in storage have caught fire. Most people who have oilcloth items make sure to clean and dry them thoroughly, then seal them into an airtight container for storage.

We were always taught to leave all linseed oil products, including paintbrushes, in a tightly sealed metal container. It's important to note that paper towels must also be disposed of safely. I had some heat up in the trash overnight (no, I wasn't the one who put them there!) Burn barrels or safe fire pits/rings will get rid of them so they won't cook off in a garbage truck...which also happened to our local garbage company many years back.

The danger of linseed oil and spontaneous combustion lies in the confined space that allows the reaction to retain its heat. Storing oil soaked rags in a closed metal container will cause the oxidizing oil to use up the available oxygen but will not reduce the danger if the contents are still hot. In that case, opening the container will allow oxygen into the hot contents resulting in a flash fire. The safest method is to ensure that there is sufficient water in the container to absorb most of the heat.

Making traditional oilcloth with linseed oil is not dangerous as long as the oil is allowed to cure fully, a 48-96 hour process, before the cloth is folded and stored. If the cloth is still oily, it has not yet cured fully and is still dangerous. The cloth should be dry, slightly stiff and pliable with a "dried paint" smell.

Dennis,

Not sure if will work in oil based paint, but a great mildew preventer in latex paint is Borax (a.k.a. 20 mule) mixed into the paint before applying. My friends and I have used it successfully in a couple of bathrooms 10+ years ago. 2 of them went through 3 teenage daughters that used to empty the water heater daily (each), sometimes twice a day.

Rich C.

Can the allback be used as a first primer followed by regular oil based primer and then paint?