I am airbrush painting all the track on my layout, how do I go about painting turnouts? Thanks Mike
I would mask off the points and joiners on the point pivots and spray as usual. Then hand paint the outside of the rails that can be seen in the point area. Keep paint away from the insides of the point and stock rails where they close / touch. I brush paint / roller paint all my track.
Gandydancer about covers it. I use painter’s tape because it’s low tack and doesn’t leave a residue. Keep the moving parts clean of paint, no big deal really.
Agree. I recall a time on an earlier layout when I used conventional masking tape to protect the rails while I did plaster scenery in the area. Work and family demands kept me away from the layout for far longer than I expected, and when I returned the glue from the tape was attached rock-like to the rail. Not fun. With a smaller around-the-walls shelf layout, I now use hand-painting of the rail exclusively.
Bill
I brush-painted all of the rail on my around-the-room layout. It’s easy work that doesn’t have to be done in a single session, and it requires no masking, and makes no excess dust in the layout room. It’s also much easier when painting the sides of the rails that are normally not seen by the viewer, but that show up exceptionally well in photos taken with the camera on the layout. [swg]
Wayne
I also use a small brush to paint rails. Seems far simpler to me than dragging out and cleaning the airbrush – it’s one of those “I’ll do anything to avoid it” jobs.
By the way, for those who haven’t tried it… painting rail is easier than it sounds, and I believe is one of the single most dramatic improvements you can make to your layout.
Jack is certainly correct on this: painting rail is a real “big bang for your buck” improvement to any layout. I use PollyScale paint and a fairly stiff 1/2" brush - you don’t have to be too neat, and the stiff bristles allow you to easily work the paint in around the spike heads. I usually do 10’ or 12’ of track, then wipe the railtops with a dry rag stretched over my fingertips - the dry (but not hardened) paint comes off easily, and with the water-based paint, there’s no odour. If I recall correctly, I used just over two bottles of paint to do all of the track on the layout (except the staging yards).
Here’s an example of what I said earlier about painting the normally unseen side of the rails -
As viewed from the aisle:
The same area, as viewed from the layout:
Of course, with the camera on the layout, it’s usually difficult to compose the shot. Luckily, with digital cameras, multiple attempts are free, and sometimes you can get pretty good results:
Wayne
I used a brush. Just one bottle of Floquil “rust” did all the rail on my around the room layout in an hour or so. Killing the shine of the nickel silver rail improves the looks dramatically and makes the rail look smaller. Painted code 100 rail is as effective as bright-and-shiny code 83 rail any time.
doctor wayne, beautiful scene there, all of it. super nice…
After masking off the moving parts / contact areas of switches, I spray paint ties and rails with Modelmaster Acrylic Dark Earth using an airbrush. It’s worth getting the brush and compressor out if you’re doing a lot of it at once. Wipe down the railtops as quickly as possible after spraying. I find it does a nice job of weathering the ties but also adds a mild rust effect to the railsides. I puttered around with various combinations and found that this was pretty simple and effective as it only involves one process.
This pic shows the effect (the track is Atlas Code 100 flex - pretty basic stuff):
I only go back and repaint certain sidings by brush where I want a more pronounced rust or weathering effect.
Cheers.
I purchased a set of the Floquil track painting markers, and like the results so far, but the jury is still out on how much I really like them. They make for quick work of everything, but I have not done enough “painting” with them to see how far they really go. It may end up being cheaper to purchase bottles of paint, and brush everything. Time will tell.
I haven’t painted mine, yet, but I plan to, someday. I’ve seen that chemical track weathering stuff that Microengineering offers; have any of you used it? How did you like it?
All the advice on painting track seems to imply that you had the good sense to do this before you put the track down and ballasted it.
Now, how about the rest of us? Is there anyone who has had success painting track in-place on a layout?
My track is layed, but not ballasted, and no scenery. That is why I am trying those pens/markers. So far so good, but in the future, I do believe that I will paint before laying.
“My track is layed, but not ballasted, and no scenery.”
If the track is already laid, but unballasted, then there’s no reason why you can’t airbrush the track in place. In fact, that’s the way I did 90% of mine. Excess spray will be covered by ballast or ground foliage anyway. My [2c]
Mine was all painted in place, and with a brush. I liked the way the Floquil “Rust” ran off my small artist’s brush and into the adjacent ballast and onto the tie plates…just like you see on the real right of way.
Did you use the Floquil Rust straight out of the jar, or did you thin it? And did you paint the ties with anything? It sounds like most people use a single application of one color over both rails and ties.
I have been paint the rails at our club layout. We used a combination of Sinohara and Peco turnouts (insulfrog) for the yard we are still building. we wired the turnouts so that the points were a purely mechanical joint and did not rely on the points to be touching the stock rail for power. because of this I did not bother masking the turnouts because they operated just like every other piece of rail with a feeder on it.
What I did is i first airbrushed a coat of grimy black with a couple drops of the rust color over everything to knock down the shine of the plastic ties (atlas code 100) I then masked off (1/4" masking tape bought at an art supply store) the ties, leaving the tie plates and spikes showing and airbrushed a rust color over teh grimy black I had already applied. I also did it heavy in some spots and very little in other to show a variation in the rust (especially near the water tower). I then removed the tape and voila,rusted rails and croesoted ties.
We haven’t ballasted yet so the overspray will be covered up and jsut look like dirt if it does show thru.
Also we had hand painted the rail previously (long story) and we really didn’t like the results, hence the reason we airbrushed it this time. Also it seemed to take a lot less time to airbrush it than to paint it by hand. It took 5 guys about a week to hand paint the rail in this yard whereas it took me about 5 hours (most of which was the masking stage I talked about) to airbrush it. Much quicker and it takes 5 minutes to clean the darn thing.
Also I used Floquil Grimy Black and Rail Brown and thinned it down to about a 60 paint/ 40 thinner mixture ( roughly)
Mr. B., I first hand-painted the ties using slightly diluted acrylics, the cheapo craft kind. I did what Joe Fugate suggests, alternating tints so that the ties look naturally aged with some of them newly replaced. Then I ballasted, and did the rail painting after that. I used a small brush, as I said, and did use it undiluted straight from the bottle. After the rails, I weathered the ballast between the rails using Joe’s technique of a mixtue of plaster of Paris and tempera powder dry brushed onto the ballast and then wetted to fix it.BTW, the other paint I used for the mains was PolyScale “railroad tie brown”. I didn’t like what resulted…it’s almost grey-green. Others have commented that this one colour is hit and miss for them. I have seen images posted here of some really good looking track done with that paint, but some guys were disappointed.
Oh, and if you decide you’d like to try a section with the Floquil “Rust”, do remember to mix it well at first, and then don’t go more than about five minutes before you give it another stir or a shake. I can tell where it began to settle out again…I had to do some places with a second application.
-Crandell
If your track is already down and ballasted the only thing I can think of is to hand paint the rails with a 00 brush and then spray the track (ballast and all) with dullcote. This at least will tone down the plastic look of the ties. I would not try to follow up with hand painting the ties, it will only make a mess on the ballast no matter how careful you are. Clean the rail heads with a brite boy and sleep easy.
It’s been my experience that full size rails are seldom “rust” colored. Most are a shade of roof brown or black. The only truly rust colored ones I’ve seen have been ancient 39ft sections tossed off to the side of the right of way. I’ve seen miles of rail of vintages earlier than 1950 that still look good, just roof brown with some grease splatters here and there.
Brand new track is (horror of horrors) shiny steel colored with black ties. So if you really don’t want to paint track, then apply some nice, even, clean ballast, shiny new rail signs and freshly asphalted crossings, and show the world and your modeling buddies that your railroad can afford to have “new” track.