Well, since we had a good experience on weathering the Alco FA & FB on the Locomotive Of The Week Thread, I wanted to go a step further and hit, er, WEATHER my P1K Erie Builts. If you recall, here they were all nice and shiny:
Pretty, huh?? Well, here's what I did, I actually used a couple different techniques on these. First, I hit them with a wash to see how they would come out. Here they are all scary ugly, since they are still wet:
Then I pulled out the chalks, and hit the roof trying to get some black soot up there. The jury is still out on this, it actually looks pretty good as long as your nose isn't stuck in it, like the camera was:
Then I used some earth colored chalks on the lower half of the sides. I hit the trucks a little harder since the rustall wash didn't give the coverage I was hoping for. The trucks are more photogenic now.
I also took the time and added some MU Cables on the nose:
So then I wanted to see how they looked out there in the world of the Penn-Haven Central RR. The first pic is the set near Valeria Station:
And one more of them in another setting:
The prototype Cowl A Units when they weathered would get the "Bow Wave" effect, and I tried to recreate that on this A Unit. What that is, is the front of the engine is relatively clean, and where the front wheels are, the dirt starts to accumulate from there back. The Pennsy just about never washed their freight units, and in later years not even the passenger engines either. I used Testors Dull- Cote over the chalks and used a brush to spread the wet chalk around before it dried. I needed to do that procedure about three times to get it where I wanted it on the sides. As far as the roof, I'm still thinking about it.
Now I feel the need to say that this whole process can be done with an airbrush! (and I own one too!) But I like the ability to have very little cleanup, and use a variety of inexpensive techniques to achieve a desired effect.
The time involved doing it this way over a brush is less as well since there is not paint mixing, and CLEANUP!
