A long time ago I remember an article about a young modeler that weathered a complete train
by spraying on to a piece of card stock placed next to the tracks as he ran the whole train by a
moderate speed which picked up the bounced over spray onto the cars
As anyone ever tried this method ?
Sounds horribly hit-and-miss to me.
Something that does work is to put a car (you could make that cars) into a large box placed on its side so that the bottom is away from you as a back wall. Depending on which bit of the car you want the weathering on you place the car with that side upwards. Then spray a very short burst of paint well clear of the topside of the car against the back wall of the box. You do not want to spray so hard that the paint bounces back as this tends to land as blobs - which is not what you want. What you do want is for a small amount of paint mist to float down and land on the car.
I’ve never done more than one car at a time this way but, now that I think of it, it should work for sets of covered hoppers (or whatever) giving them the “have run through the same weather” look.
The great thing is that you can practice using a block of wood of about car size until you get the technique right and then you put the car(s) in the box - NB! DO NOT PUT CARS INTO THE BOX ON PAINT THAT HAS SETTLED AND IS STILL WET! (Guess how I know that [xx(]). The best thing to do is to have several sheets of card or thick paper cut to the whole size of the side of the box that will be the floor… anything less and some part of the car is just garuanteed to get over the edge onto sticky paint…[banghead] CHANGE THE CARD EVERY TIME YOU CHANGE THE CAR TO BE SPRAYED.
You can re-use the card so long as you give it good time to dry.
Be cautious… while you are applying very little paint it still needs the normal drying time. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it will dry quick and you cn turn the car over to do the other side. Also… you will have some drifted paint on the ends, the side toward you and a little on the side away from you… so of the six sides you need five to dry be
Remember that adequate ventilation and common sense are your friend, because I also think that someone has been inhaling inside the box causing him to think WAY outside said box.
I certainly wouldn’t try this indoors on an actual layout because everything around the area would also receive a coat of paint.
Also keep in mind that each car and loco in a train was built at a certain time and had traveled through certain places, being exposed to certain elements. One car might be 5 years old and relatively new-looking, another is 20 years old and sunbaked, another is 15 years old and rather rusty, yet another is 29 years old with lots of graffiti on it. Not all cars in a train are weathered equally.
If one has a large amount of rolling stock, I would take a few and make them “muddy,” take a few more and make them “rusty,” etc, then switch a few of them around at random.
Good point! I should have made it! I’ve not been inhaling… I am subject to random D&A testing 24/7 with regard to my work… good point though… maybe I’d better check up on some of the older solvents with my company…
You make a very Valid point
However on Unit trains such as the coal drags the C&O hauled i would think
the weathering would be more equal
It’s an interesting idea. But I like the in the box method better, on the layout just sounds like trouble.
This idea may be better for passenger train consists. As an example, think of a westbound Southwest Chief consist nearing Los Angeles after a few days of dust, and sand blasting after the last cleaning in Chicago. Even the classiest of trains, the Super Chief, looked dusty and sandy towards the end of its journeys. But this in route weathering is uniform since the whole trainset typically gets a bath at the end terminals.
I know some of those experts are going to say, but with your examples, what about Albuquerque? Yes the full trainset is/was cleaned at Albuquerque, however this is primarily just the windows.