Dear Friends
Here are some pictures of my son’s track that I’m about to paint with an airbrush and PollyScale paint.
Are there other areas I should mask? If so, please advise me. I don’t have a regular computer handy, just my iPhone, and I don’t see a way to display these pictures inline.
I appreciate your sharing your experience and wisdom with me.
—Jaddie
PS Posting and editing this on an IPhone was pure torture.
LION thinks that spray paint will still get under those tapes. Put more tape on it and it should be ok.
ROAR
Jaddie,
Are you a subscriber? If so Cody shows you how to mask and paint the rail in this fairly new video.
Dear LION and UPinCT
I went with LION’s suggestion, added more tape and painted the track. I expected difficulty in getting the paint of the tops of the rails, but I used a regular straight razor and it came right off.
I added a black streak down the middle of the ties to simulate grease droppings, but my “line down the middle” is very wavy.
Now I have to touch up where the tape was, ballast the rest of the track (and therefore must do research about how to ballast around switches), pour the pond, put in a bunch of trees, and install structures.
I am a Model Railroader subscriber and saw Cody’s video, but I was still a little unsure about what I was doing.
—Jaddie
Actually, his looks just like the masking job that Cody did in the video.
I just spent 2 weeks spreading ballast and gluing everything. After the first glue application, my turnouts are kind of stuck; no worries though, I expected this (this can be minimized by flushing the points with plain alcohol or water to dilute any glue that gets in there after you’re done applying glue everywhere else). After the ballast is dry, I put a couple drops of alcohol on the point rails and throwbar followed by some ‘wet’ water before I ever attempt to throw the turnout. A few minutes later, I apply slight pressure to the throwbar, not the points. Once the points throw, I flush the area with water and clean out any ballast or groundcover from around the moving parts. I have Micro Engineering turnouts (with small spring under the turnouts to hold the points) and ballast has gotten into this mechanism a couple times. Just a few puffs of air (or ‘wet’ water) while moving the turnout has worked for me.
I could have been a lot more careful applying ballast around the points (in fact I did for the first 3) but found it took a lot more time, and I still had stuck points to deal with. I highly recommend you be careful with the ballast and glue (I’ve ballasted many turnouts and have kind of a system that works for me); but if you get sticky turnouts, don’t worry, they can be cleaned to work fine. Ever notice the prototype also keeps ballast a little low around the points too? Good practice. Remember it’s easier to add a little more ballast, then to take some out; put a little down, glue, free the turnouts, then apply more ballast if you want to.
I highly recommend you follow others’ techniques, but if things don’t go exactly right, don’t worry, it won’t ruin your turnouts (at worse, it might require you spend a few more minutes getting things working again).
Have fun!
