Weathering:
Weathering Rolling Stock (By John Drye and Bill Rutherford).
A number of folks have asked us about the techniques we use to reduce the value of our Micro-Trains™ collections. It's easiest to "ruin" a car soon after you buy it, before it becomes outrageously expensive -- then never, never look at a collectors' listing.
The first step is to take a look at prototype cars, to see how nature ruins the railroads' collections. If you model the modern era, all you need to do is to continue to photograph the train after the engines pass. If you model an older era, there is tremendous variety of published material with good
colour pictures of dirty, rusted dented, stained and grungy rolling stock. Just what we're looking for! The pictures provide a feel for the variety in weathering on the prototype, as well as giving a starting point for weathering specific cars. Pick a prototype car to try to match.
There are as many weathering techniques as there are
colours of dirt. Two of the most popular are painting with washes and dry brushes (lots of thinned paint and just a little paint, respectively) and dusting with artists' chalks. You can also use an airbrush. This month, we'll describe the first technique.
Since most factory paint jobs are "shiny", Dullcote the car before you start in order to allow the weathering paint to grip. For a typical grungy boxcar, start with a wash of dirty brown. Find a
colour that matches dirt. A medium, grayish brown is a good place to start. Try the military
colours section in a general hobby store or Polly Scale Rail Brown at your local model railroad store.
It's easiest to use a thin wash initially, then use a second coat if the car is still too clean. Grab a large brush and dip it into the paint and gob the paint into a container filled with water (water-based paints are much easier to work with). The wash should be the consistency of chicken soup. Flow the thinned paint over the car, brushing vertically. The vertical brushstrokes simulate the effect of rainfall on the sides and roof. Wait for the paint to dry (this IS an exciting hobby!). Several cars can be weathered at once, so the first one will be dry by the time the last one is finished. If the car still looks too clean compared to the prototype, apply a second wash.
After the washes have dried, use the "dry brush" technique to highlight lighter-coloured areas on the car, such as roof walks or ladders. Find a
colour that approximately matches the original colour on the car (before you ruined it). Mix about 50:50 with white. Use a wide, flat brush. Take just a little paint on the end of the brush and wipe nearly all of it off on a cloth. Lightly brush the paint across the roof walk (or ribs, if there isn't a roof walk), ladders and any raised surface that catches light. Don't overdo it. The idea is to trick the eye into believing that the lighter
coloured areas are catching the light.
This is the fun part. The dry brush technique can also be used to represent scratches and dents by using aluminium paint brushed horizontally, rust stains by using rust (Polly Scale makes a good
colour) brushed vertically, and chemical, cement or grain spills by using yellow, white or tan vertically.
Look at the trucks on some prototype cars. They are usually a grungy, rusty brown or dark gray. dry brushing the trucks is one of the easiest ways to make a car look more realistic. The dark plastic used on most models is a stark
colour seldom found in nature.
We'll talk about chalks next time.
If you do make the mistake of looking up the value of that car you just ruined, it helps to repeat: "I'm a
modeller, not a collector, I'm a
modeller, not a collector."
More Things to do to Weather Rolling Stock
You've washed your boxcar (or whatever) to tone it down and
discolour it. You've dutifully dry brushed the thing to highlight details, roof walks, etc. you've even dry brushed the running gear in various shades of brown and gray to dirty them. What next? Chalk!
As mentioned last month, looking at prototypes is the best way to discover what you're trying to do. Note how, after cars have been in use cross-country, they pick up a faded, dusty look - in grays and tans - along their sides and front. Note also the dead, sooty, black and gray deposits on top of a diesel after it's run a bit. These are the effects we're after.
Chalk, for the purpose of this article, includes a number of substances, ranging from common blackboard chalk, through the various artist pastel chalks, right up to various arcane formulations sold in little jars by sinister people at train shows. They all work, to one degree or other, and with similar techniques, but this article will stick with oil-based pastel chalks such as can be bought in sets at your local art supply store. The sets come in themes - earth tones, grays, brights, etc. - if you don't mind the expense ($10 - $20), buy a set of grays and a set of browns, as well as a stick each of black and white. If you just want to experiment, just pick up a stick each of white, black, and brown.
First, apply a flat coat such as Dullcote to your victim to seal any previously applied weathering, decals, etc., and to ensure a good working surface.
Next, take a piece of sandpaper and tape it to the inside of one of the plastic boxes your cars came in (one of the several hundred such you likely have in your closet). Sand the end of a stick of chalk against the sandpaper until you've a nice pile of chalk powder in the box. Oh - use reasonably coarse sandpaper for this or you'll be at it awhile. You see now why you're using a box - the powder gets everywhere. Repeat this process with each of the
colours you plan to use, each in a different box.
Use old, worn, brushes (you'll never paint with them again after this...), cotton swabs, and even bits of sponge (the fine-grained type that sometimes pads model trains) to apply the powder. Keep everything dry. Dip your brush into the powder and note how it clings to the brush. The oil base helps with this.
Now, apply chalk to your rolling stock. Working from pictures, you can do a number of things. Apply vertical strokes of light gray and lightly dust them out with a clean brush to represent dulling and fading. Lightly brush the lower body with light browns and tans to give it a road worn look. Brushing them gently with a clean, soft, brush or cotton swab will spread and remove the chalk. A very light dusting of red-brown over the running gear, immediately flat-coated, makes it look as if it needs a paint job. By the way - we've chalk-dusted our running gear without ill effect, but if you want to be careful, remove the truck frames from your locomotives before trying this (the chalk dust mixes with any oil in the gear to make a nice gooey slurry that probably isn't good for things...) This treatment works well on boxcar roofs, too. The chalk's easy to apply and if you don't like it, wipe it off and start over (that was why you applied more flat coat again).
The key's to know what you're trying to do - use references! The chalks mix well with one another and you can get specific shades of road dirt with a little experimentation. Applying several dustings of different shades of dark gray and black to the tops of your diesels (and to the cars immediately behind) will deaden them nicely. Coal hoppers benefit immensely from this as well. Heavy-handed light gray and white chalk, dusted onto the sidewalls below the hatches, will do a good job of weathering a covered cement hopper. Use other
colours for various chemicals.
After you've applied a protective flat-coat layer, you will notice that what was almost garish is now muted. Maybe too muted. Apply another layer of chalk dust and more flat-coat and see how the weathering and dirt slowly build up!
This is only one tool in your weather-box. Washing (as described last month) over chalk (after you've applied flat-coat) gives, for little effort, a very nice effect.
dry brushing chalked areas with contrasting dirty
colours, with lightened body colours, etc., can all lend depth to your weathering job and make it more realistic.
If you're feeling particularly dirty, mix a bit of chalk (or talcum powder, for that matter) with your favorite dirt
colour and lightly dry brush the running gear or sides with this. The dirt now becomes three dimensional. Do this with rust
coloured paint and your rust spots will look really corroded... The key is to keep an open mind and experiment. There's very little you can do to a model boxcar that hasn't happened in prototype somewhere...
Next we'll deal with damage and dings, clutter, repaints, and other signs of old age.
Maintenance and Repainting:
During the course of it's life, a freight car undergoes regular maintenance, which often includes partial repainting. Partial repainting is evident by differently
coloured paint on portions of the car. Routine maintenance often involves repainting dimensional data. One easy way to simulate recently repainted data is to apply a small piece of clear tape to the reporting marks before beginning the weathering process. When you are done, remove the tape, and voila, newly painted data.
Other repainting may involve painting out an old RR name and logo upon repurchase or merger. After completing the basic weathering, paint over the old road name and RR logo with a
colour slightly darker than the original car colour. The new road name and logo can then be added using decals or dry transfers. The car number can remain the same or change. Often the lettering style changes when a new number is applied. Best bet is (you guessed it) to work from photos. Some recently released modern era boxcars are factory painted to reflect this sort of re-naming.
Sometimes only a portion of a car is repainted after repairs. To simulate this on a wood car, weather the car, then carefully repaint several individual boards with the original
colour. On a metal car, one or more roof or side panels can be repainted, either in aluminum (for the roof) or the original
colour after initial weathering. Roof repainting is especially effective, since models are so often viewed from above.
Rust:
There are a couple of things one can do to simulate rust damage on a piece of rolling stock, beyond dusting and washing the model (which does a good job of duplicating general malaise, but not specific damage...). Work from photos!
One method is to paint the area to be rusted with a base coat of dark brown. Flat roof brown (from your favorite manufacturer...) mixed with black works well. Polly-S makes a fantasy
colour, Ogre Dark Brown, which is fine right out of the bottle. Mix some rust
colour (again, from your favourite print maker) with the base colour on a palette and dab this onto the dark base coat, leaving a bit of the base coat showing through. Finally, dry brush (see part one of this article) just a bit of rust (unadulterated this time) onto the area. The result is a rusted area with old, dark, rust highlighted with fresh rust. If you're weathering, say, the corner of a car in this manner, complete the process with a bit of dry brushed metal
colour (steel, silver, etc.) right on the corner's edge to represent a surface subject to wear whose surrounding area is rusted. Omitting any or all of the lighter
colours will give you an area of old rust.
Another method is to paint dripping rust spots on your cars. In this instance, take a piece of wire with a dab of dark brown on it and poke your car where you want the rust spot. Let it dry a minute or so (a good time to poke the car elsewhere...) and then repeat the process with some fresh rust
colour. Now, with a dry paintbrush, stroke LIGHTLY downward over the still-wet fresh rust
colour. The result is a rust spot similar to the one on the side of your car, that, exposed to the weather, has rust stains running down from it.
Try it - you'll like it!
Graffiti:
You can now buy graffiti decal sheets that will deface even your prettiest cars. If you're too creative (read: cheap) for decals, get some white acrylic paint and a good #0 or #000 brush and draw your own. You will amaze yourself and your friends with your artwork. Look at any CSX freight for inspiration. If you're really ambitious, do full
colour graffiti - it really dresses up those bland covered hoppers!
Most graffiti these days seems to be applied in waterproof paint, but one still sees the occasional amateur job in tempera or chalk that the rain's washed into a whitish muddle - work from photos and you can get some neat (not to mention awful looking) effects.
Damage:
The tried-and-true method of applying minor damage - dings and dents - to hoppers and gondolas has always been to apply heat (light bulb, hot knife, etc.) NEAR but not ON to the area to be damaged, then to prod the area with a finger or knife blade until it's dented. This works well but is not all one's limited to.
Take your motor tool with either a cutting drum or an abrasive ball and GENTLY thin areas (from the inside) on the sides of a gondola, hopper, or box car, perhaps wearing all the way through in spots. This is especially effective when you then rust the area up a bit. Restraint is important here because with one slip of the tool, you'll have a car that looks as if it took an RPG in the side... Several of the older members of CSX's box car fleet look as if they got this treatment.
Very occasionally one sees a car with patches on it, a victim, no doubt, of the motor tool treatment. Cut a couple of squares of thin styrene - 5 thousandths' thickness or less - and apply them to side of a car with cement. When dry, paint to match the rest of the car (or not to match - see the tape trick, above) and weather a bit.
Lading:
Freight cars run empty as much as half the time, but empty open cars seem more boring than ones with loads. This doesn't have to be the case. Empty cars retain evidence of the load just carried and can be modeled just as effectively as loaded ones. One of the easiest ways to provide evidence of recent loadings is with scale lumber or pallets. Loads are secured with 2 x 4, 4 x 4, 8 x 8 or larger lumber. Go down to your favorite hobby shop and pick up some of scale lumber in assorted sizes. Chop into six to ten foot Lents and glue into gondola bottoms, on flat cars, or even in open-door boxcars. Boxcars are great place to put empty pallets, too. Leftovers can be scattered around loading docks on your module.
More recently, metal strapping has been used to secure loads. This can be simulated with very thin chart tape from a art or graphics supply store. Buy the thinnest you can find; 0.5mm if you can get it. Strapping often curls into circular shapes when removed from loads. You can wrap the tape around a brush or pencil to accomplish this. Just like the scale lumber, glue into the empty car.
Gondolas and hoppers seldom are completely emptied of coal, gravel, sand or stone loads. You can sprinkle a little fine ballast or dirt inside gondolas to simulate remnants. Empty coal hoppers can use a dusting of the finest scale coal you can find; look for the consistency of dust. Gondolas seem to get the hardest usage of any car type. They are usually dented, rusted, and filthy. Just the kind of car we love. Gondolas are a great place to practice extreme techniques. It's hard to overdo it on these cars; just look at some prototype pictures (have you heard that before?)