OK, I am getting sicker in this hobby and starting to like the looks of drit! I bought a B40-8 Conrail that is weathered and love it. Has that nices nast ran look, trucks as a nice rust look, soot on the roof and rust stains down the side.
On the other hand my Big Boy looks just way to new. Bolier and fire box plates just are to bright. I have seen a video about using chalk to weather the engine or rolling stock but need to spary dull clear over the chalk to make it stay on. Can I mask up the drivers and use the dull coat? Would the chalk stay on if I dont touch the engine?
Just not in a hurry to take a part a 14 day old engine that is under warranty.
My sugejestion would be to practice before doing that to your BigBoy use a old box car or ect. when you get the chalk right testers make a spray on clear dull coat to seal stuff like that.
[2c] While the old, cheap boxcar to practice on suggestion is always good, for steam locos may I suggest getting one of the plastic, snap-together, unpowered (Monogram?) Big Boy or Hudson models that are available. This would give you a cheap “loco” to practice weathering on, and if you don’t like the results, strip it and try again! This will give you the exact loco you want to weather, or at least something fairly close, and you can keep trying it until you get the results you want without risking an expensive model. When you have finally used it up as weathering practice, you can always use it on the layout as a park display loco, scrapyard, or as parts for another project. I have some old Tyco diesels for the same purposes, because at this point, my weathering skills aren’t very good, and may never be! Good luck!
