Weathering Locomotives & Rolling stock

[thogan3]

I had built one as well....real rust from my old Weber Grill!

[Allegany2666]

Can't beat the real thing looks great, nicely done not over stated.

[GN.2-6-8-0]

I still preferr my airbrush for weathering,trick is to constantly monitor what your doing to keep from getting carried away perticularly with my brass steamers

[Eastern Roads]

Weathering a Steamer with an airbrush and having it look good is an art all to itself. Nice job there!! The talent shows!

[Daryl]

weathering a steamer any way is an art unto its self

[Eastern Roads]

A Southern RR Hopper, i used some white chalk to simulate the cement.

[thogan3]

Hey.....thats really good.....how'd you get the paint to "bleed?

[Eastern Roads]

Depending on the project, (and I was experimenting here,) when I shot it with the Dull-Cote, I rubbed a paint brush over the lettering. If you look in the freight car of the week, you'll see a Lehigh Valley White boxcar I did the same with, but without chalks. I took a pic of a hopper similar to this over the weekend, and I realized I need to add the rust to the roof...A modeler's job is never done!! and that's a good thing!!

[Eastern Roads]

I am the happy owner of some Spectrum SD-45's. They are some REALLY SMOOTH running engines, and are probably my favorites on the RR. I did some detail work on them, but still need some better weathering. Here's a front and rear view of an engine not yet in service, and one that has seen some miles on the Road:





Okay, what did we do here? Here's the list:

Dull- Cote
Brass Horn, painted
MV Products lights drilled and set in front and back
Detail Associates MU Cables, painted
Yellow painted handrails, chipped after normal use...
Oh, and those McHenry's which are going away. These are the last engines that have those...When I ran these on a Club Layout, the heads would usually break off, and the springs would give it up. I'm with Kadees now.

[Eastern Roads]

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!