I intended to weatherize the majority of my buildings, just so they wouldn’t be new and fresh on the layout.
I recently bought and glue together Walthers Ice House & Icing Platform. However, I’m currently stuck in the middle of nowhere on “how” to weather this set of buildings.
A member in my MRR group suggested that I should use Dulcote spray can to weather the sides of the House “black” Even though, he doesn’t even have a single reefer car on his layout. I feel that this idea is somewhat wrong considering the main operations (ice upon ice) of these buildings.
…not only am I open for ideas or see what you do for your Ice House (if you have one), but I’m looking for ideas on how to mimic the effects of algae, molds, grimes, water stains, and etc.
I’ve never had dullcote turn anything black. What it does do is provide some grip if you use pan pastels, and it cuts the shine of the white molded plastic. It also seals the pastels, after application, but that reduces their visibility. Bragdon pastels are a paint pigment, not chalk, and I’ve read they stick better.
I was unaware of ice houses back in the day, but the few pics I see on google, they aren’t moldy grimy buildings. If it was your railroad, you wouldn’t want them to be grimy buildings would you?
You might want to use a dilute india ink wash to provide some definition to the boards of the building.
I would use heavier weathering on the platform supports and the roof and the foundation of the building. An airbrush is a great tool for weathering, but it requires practice and a financial outlay.
Dry brushing would be another technique to weather the platform.
While I have multiple icehouses on my late '30s layout, none of them are weathered very much at all.
Here’s the one from Walthers, with a few modifications and a couple of scratchbuilt outbuildings…
(Aerial photo courtesy of Secord Air Services)
In retrospect, if I had a little more room, I would have placed the icehouse at the mid-point of the platforms.
All of the icehouses on the layout are owned by the same company, and most also sell coal and, in some cases, heating oil and other petroleum products.
Here’s the main icehouse which supposedly supplies all of the others…
While there’s a small elevated platform for icing a single reefer at-a-time, the main function of this structure is to supply ice to all of the other icehouses on the layout, hence the much-longer lower loading dock. The ice supposedly comes from a nearby pond on the unseen side of the structure.
This structure, and all of the smaller ones, including the coal elevators, are scratchbuilt, the latter ones to a common plan.
I have one of the Walthers ice house buildings. It is a rather large and very white structure. I weathered it down a bit with an India Ink wash and some Dul-Coat. I like the Dr. Wayne idea of making the building a thinner background building. It would use less space and be less obtrusive, while fully maintaining its railroad function with the platforms and the ice.
The outside of the building wouldn’t get much if any water damage or mold etc. but it would be affected by wind and rain like any other building. My fallback is to apply a layer of powdered charcoal over the exterior walls (use a soft paper towel to remove some if you want a very lightly weathered building) and then spray it with flat finish. Unlike powders or chalk, powdered charcoal can be sealed in with flat finish without disolving. Then you can add weathering with chalk or powders if you wish.
