- Weathering

Micro-Trains Accurail weathered covered hoppers

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 01:37:36 +0000

Micro-Trains and Accurail have come out with a series of weathered covered hoppers. The sides are nicely done but you will need to do some additional weathering on the car ends and underside to blend the weathering in. I also added metal wheel sets and Kadee couplers.
On the Southern car I painted out the yellow conspicuity striping and added some more weathering to roof hatches , car ends and the underside. The CSXT car had some additional weathering to the side sills, roof, car ends and underside to blend in.
If your interested check out the website at https://micro-trains.com>product .
Bruce

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Independence Day Weathering

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 18:34:15 +0000

I was contemplating what I wanted to do for the next two days prior to leaving for Texas. Tomorrow is Independence Day. I model the summer of 1976, and last year I bought a pair of CNW 40-ft trailers to place on my 96-ft flat cars to simulate TOFC trains. They are Walters units decorated for the Bicentennial and they are absolutely PRISTINE!

  cnwbicentsmall.jpg (Size: 353.55 KB / Downloads: 660)

It made me think. Were these trailers brand new in 1976, or were the trailers just repainted? Personally, I'm trying to weather most of my rolling stock to reflect the era - 1976 was NOT a good time for railroads, and I model early Conrail when stuff was held together with bubble gum and a prayer. I really wanted to find some grimy trailer examples.  Time for a web search... Found this one....

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So, the one on the trailer looks like the bicentennial paint was applied after years of trailer use, which was really what I was hoping for. The prototype also has corrugated sides versus the flat sides on the Walters version. I think I'll just ignore that difference. I figure that I'll tape off the red, white and blue stripes and other markings and apply most of the weathering treatments to each trailer and then give the stripes a dusting... More photos of the process coming.

A second attempt

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 21:56:52 +0000

Today was a day in the paint room. After painting two new cars, I decided to give a second attempt at weathering. As I am still practicing new techniques, I choose a simple boxcar which is not much detailed. Here are the results :

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It seems this car had run behind a steamer for many years.

I applied diluted acrylic paints with an a newly acquired double action airbrush. I would certainly have had better results with more practice with the airbrush which is quite different from my old single action.

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Some observations of prototype railcar trucks for weathering

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 01:59:50 +0000

Hi gang
Before I retired I took some close up shots of items that may interest you when weathering the wheels and bolsters of equipment. I will try to share some of my observations with you.

There are a lot of differences between roller bearing and Babbitt bearing trucks. Here are both types of trucks used on a caboose. This roller bearing truck shows there is a little rust on the wheel
  19770300 CABOOSE TRUCK EPO.jpg (Size: 70.25 KB / Downloads: 1252)
This one is a modified friction bearing truck. It can show some rust depending on how much the wheel was cleaned when the roller bearing was installed.
  20070715 caboose modified friction brg truck with alternator 021 (Custom).jpg (Size: 230.03 KB / Downloads: 1204)
and last is the babbitt (or friction) bearing truck that was the norm for most cars before the late 50's. There is no rust on the wheels because the wheels always had journal oil on them because the journals don't have a rear seal around the axle. You also want to remember when these cars were humped the journal covers were opened and a man would be adding oil using a tube as the cars were pushed over the hump. Many times his aim wasn't as good as it could have been
  20070715 caboose friction bearing truck 025 (Custom).jpg (Size: 261.56 KB / Downloads: 1143)

I also took some close ups of the Blunt truck that were on the ALCo S-1 It too had friction bearings and the outside surface of the wheel always was oily with no rust. Keeping the truck side frames clean was always a job because there was enough journal oil to keep the dust sticking
  20070715 alco blunt truck 012 (Custom).jpg (Size: 247.74 KB / Downloads: 1019)
  20070715 brake hanger alco blunt truck 037 (Custom).jpg (Size: 212.14 KB / Downloads: 1027)

Attached are several more photos that will enlighten a little more.
Charlie

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A First Attempt at Weathering

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 16:33:25 +0000

Saying that I was reluctant to weather my cars is an understatement. I was simply horrified at the idea to take a new car out of its box and make a mess of it with paints or chalks, not to mention a car made from a resin kit and painstakingly painted and lettered. I had read magazine articles but couldn't decide to go ahead. And I must admit that I didn't always like the the results I saw.

After reading advice from Doctorwayne many times and seeing his nice weathered cars, I finally decided to go ahead. I grabbed a car I had planned to modify and used an airbrush to follow Doctorwayne's advice. For this first attempt, I did three different things :

a light coat of Red Brown acrylic paint all over the car so the lettering was not so obvious;
a light coat of Earth color acrylic paint on the bottom of the car and trucks to simulate dust;
a light coat of Black acrylic paint on the roof and top of ends to simulate soot.

All of those paints were well diluted with water.

Here are some photos.

Before

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After

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Left : Weathered car. Right : a similar car unweathered.

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Top : Weathered car. Bottom : a similar car unweathered.

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It was easier than I thought and I am pleased with those results. I should have been more generous on the coat of dust on the bottom of the car and trucks though. I don't like heavy weathering and I tried to stay on the light side, maybe too light. I will have to practice a lot more before taking one of the kits I have built myself. There are also other techniques described by Doctorwayne which I should try.

It's just the beginning of a new journey.

Trying Weathering Chalks

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 03:47:39 +0000

After getting back into modeling I found that I had forgotten how I did some of my weathering. The last few months I have been experimenting with different methods. I have given up on airbrushing as a method. I was growing dissatisfied with it back in the old days.

In the past and now I have used a combination of washes and dry brushing for weathering. I have used craft paints exclusively. I have had in my opinion varying degrees of success with these methods. For washes I used blue windshield washer fluid with great success. However, recently I have not been happy with it. They must have changed the formulation and I believe lowered the alcohol content. I can’t prove this, but I had an old bottle and things were better than the bottle I bought earlier this year.

I was also a big fan of Folk Art paint but their color selection has been reduced in the stores around here. Gone are many of my favorites. I have tried other brands but they are usually too watery for my purposes.

I have searched YouTube and found several videos which at first seemed helpful. After trying the methods, I was left frustrated with my level of success. The videos always seem to be missing some important pre-starting step or just became boring ramblings.

I purchased a couple of books. I tend to like printed instructions. For me, the videos can be great to show something, but it is hard to repeat the instructions or in some cases find the particular technique I am looking for in a 30-minute video.

One thing that caught my eye was weathering chalks. I have tried them in the past with no luck. The car would look great until I sealed it. All the work I did would disappear. I would do multiple applications but, in the end, it looked like I did nothing.

I started to read and see examples using the newer weathering chalks. The more I researched the more I liked what I found. A couple of months ago I purchased some Pan Pastel chalks. My first attempts were to add the chalks to cars that had been previously weathered using washes.

Weathering Modern Rolling Stock

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 09:41:55 +0000

Hello,

as i wrote in another thread, i have purchased some modern cars for Fremo operations. Taking advantages of sales and reduced prices at least i get a colourful mix of modern cars. And when you are accustomed to the dark colours of elder eras, the modern era cars are comparatively very colourful.
Something has to happen to these bright shiny cars. In real this is the work of Jürgen who has specialized to this art of work. In return i reworked some of his locos and turned them into runners like a dream.

Let' start with a blue one. CSX and clean cars are two different universes. So Jürgen occupied my workshop, locked me out and began exercising his vodoo.

That was the result.

Another candidate.

We were astonished, these white gons were relatively clean. We have looked to nearly hundred photos of the prototype.

Lutz

Heavy weathered loco roofs

Fri, 21 Oct 2016 07:32:07 +0000

I tried to get some heavy weathered loco roofs.The prototype has a real crust of dirt collected over time. Specially the harvest gold loco looked like a toy from the eagles view.
The paint is a diluted mix of brown and black. A butt brush was used applying the paint with dab motions.

IMG_0782 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_0781 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_0780 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_0779 by faraway52, on Flickr

ps. I used the iPhone 6Plus for the photos again.

weathered O scale Challenger

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 15:39:33 +0000

Hello,

here a pic of my O scale UP Challenger

Paul

IMG_1475 by MODEL AND REAL TRAINS, on Flickr

New airbrush test

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 15:32:25 +0000

Got a new Badger Sotar 20/20 airbrush on Friday. Unpacked it and did a quick weathering test on a couple of new Accurail boxcars with it. What an awesome airbrush!!!

Dirty water weathering

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 17:50:50 +0000

I use a lot of acylic paints in my modeling.Since they are water based I clean my brushes with water.I discovered a long time ago that the dirty water from this brush cleaning made for a great weathering wash.I keep several different bottles with different colours in them ranging from white to brown to dark grays. This CV boxcar and the two flats in the lower picture are weathered this way.The decks of the flat cars also have some paint weathering applied too.

These are Z scale by the way.The neat thing about this kind of weathering is if you don't like it,it can be washed off if done fairly soon after it is dry.

This is also the method I use to weather my N and HO rolling stock. It' cheap

Some Weathering, first try.

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 08:47:31 +0000

Hi there,
I think I´ve never posted some pics of my first steps in weathering some rolling stock. I have doe a lot of weathering on larger scale models like cars,Trucks and some 1:35 tanks but the H0 things are new to me. I use pastels,oilpaints,pigments and other things, airbrush and paint brushes ans some other tools.
So I started with and Roundhouse 50ft boxcar kit. Here are some before and after pictures. Airbrushed with some diluted white paint for fading the green and the added some rustspots with a fine brush. used some pigments and a soft brush after that.

I don´t have filled the holes in the roof and haven´t done any details . It´s sitting on the started build shelf since that time. Will do some more work on that someday.

My next try was an Athearn 50ft double door boxcar. The material and tools are the same on that model.

Faded the paint a little bit with a light grey wash

Painted some areas of the roof with burnt sienna oil paint and added some MIG rust pigments in different tones.

added some scratches and rust spots with a fine brush and then sprayed a light dust on the lower part of the shell with diluted Valejo light grey

the other side looks better in my opinion

I´ll post some pictures of my 40ft PGE boxcar later.
Any comments are very appreciated.

Thanks for looking,
Regards,Chris

Various weathering project

Sat, 27 Jun 2015 17:40:45 +0000

Madness! Some people think summer isn't a modelling season but I'm not following this mindset!

I recently decided to improve and weather a few cars. If you want more info about the WIP, just follow the blog links (more pictures too).

The first one was to see if I could improve an IHC double door 50ft boxcar... Answer? NO!!! There's a limit to what you can do with a real bad model. But at least, it was an occasion to practice weathering!

http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...uy-to.html
http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...art-2.html
http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...-part.html

The next ones were a set of kitbashed Roundhouse 40ft boxcar into woodchip service. I've built 9 cars. Those are the 3 last I weathered:

Then I tried to improve a toyish Roundhouse boxcar into something more realistic. It's crazy how a paint job can bring a car to life.

http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...oxcar.html

As if it was not enough, I decided to update an old Intermountain CN boxcar I painted and lettered. My goal was to represent a very decrepit car still in revenue service circa 1985.

http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...story.html

And the last one was about using an extra True Line reefer shell painted the wrong color to make a believeable car. I had to make a new underframe and details for it.

Before:

After:

http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/...-cn-8.html

All in all, it was really fun to build, bash and weathered these cars over the last two weeks. I still have other projects, including kitbashing a Train Miniature OSB boxcar into a CN MoW storage car. For this one, I followed Doctorwayne's excellent tutorial.

Matt

Rust color paintsi

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 23:44:25 +0000

I'm almost out of my pollyscale rust paint. Have any of you come across an equivalent color match to this color of rust from another vendor?

Any suggestions appreciated,

Mark

Neolube

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 02:58:42 +0000

Anyone use this stuff for detailing their steam locomotive's side rods, valve gear and drivers? Pros or cons?

http://www.micromark.com/neolube-2-fl-oz,8383.html

Thanks, Mark