Last month I purchased a basket case Varney Dockside at a train show. I stripped the brushed-on paint and got the motor working again. Then I repainted it and added home-made decals and weathered the loco to match photos I had found online. This is my first weathering attempt, and would welcome comments. The glossy finish in the valve gear is the result of oiling.
Looks very good [Y]
Great Job.
Jumijo,
Very cool! Please share the painting details (colors/products used, airbrush, rattlecan, etc).
Good job on the rust accents.
That looks good. A great first attempt.
I wonder if there would be that much rust on a real steam locomotive?
Anyway it looks good! [tup]
Looks good to me as well. I might change out some of the rust for white. That’s where water leaks out and calcifies on the surface. Pretty common on steam engines.
You’re over all effect is good though.
Thank you all for taking the time to reply. This locomotive is serving as a test piece as I learn how to weather. I began by painting the die cast shell with Krylon flat black. Then a few coats of Testor’s flat clear were followed by a dusting of pastels. A coat of grimy black was applied to the running gear.
I am somewhat disappointed in the decals being so easily detected. I’ll need to work on them. Also, the pastel coat is very easily messed up by handling, so I’ll need to find a way to make them more durable. Finally, I’ll remove some of the rust staining as suggested.
Thanks for all your comments.
Go heavy w/ the pastel weathering (practice first), then add one more dull-coat finish over that - the dull-coat WILL tone down the weathering by some noticible amount, hence the need for a practice/test shot so you get an idea of how much.
In case you don’t know, there are brands of sticky weathering powders, much like ground pastel chalks.
They don’t require a dull coat and will stand a fair amount of handling. Joel Bragdon, I believe, makes some and there is a brand in the MIcro Mark catalog (might be the same one) if you’d care to try the powders.
Dull coat (kote) has been the “go to”/traditional method but I haven’t used it myself. Sometimes if the humidity is too high the dull kote can get foggy. There are threads in the archive about how to deal with that if it happens.
I think your loco looks great. I live in a Maritime area and I think the amount of rust you show could be possible for a salt water dock/pier loco, especially in the Pacific N.W. where it rains so much.
For most purposes, replacing it with white/alkaline would probably look more realistic in general.
Anyway, I’ve only weathered structures so far and if I could do as well as you have done on your lst attempt, I’d be one happy boy.
Jim