I picked this up today and need to weather it befoe I install it in place of the one I built.
I am not looking at a lot of weathering, something that makes it looks like it has been there a while, I figure the base should be concrete. I am going to try to maks a decal with ‘‘Traintown’’ on it and am toying with the idea of painting ‘‘Billy Bob’’ or something like that on it.
Any tips would be appriciated. Thanks, Mike
My LHS had a series of seminars about weathering over the summer. The instructor’s favorite technique was to first Dul-Cote the model, then apply weathering powders, and then Dul-Cote again to seal them in. The powders are designed just for this, and they are ground much finer than, for example, chalks used for weathering. I picked up a few powders. I quickly discovered that I really enjoyed weathering this way, and got very good results. One nice thing is that you can wash it off and start over, as long as you haven’t put on that cover coat of Dul-Cote. I also discovered that I was going through a lot of Dul-Cote, but I was having a lot of fun and getting the results I wanted.
I’m not clear about which of those structures is the water tower you’re asking about. Assuming it’s the one that’s silver in color, what’s it going to be used for? If it’s domestic water supply for a town, it should have just enough weathering to kill any shine with a little rust on the rivets on the tank and support structure. Domestic water supply tanks are regulated pretty closely by both the state and the feds so they rarely get in very bad shape. The steps that Mr. B described will work just fine but don’t go overboard. A tank supplying something like steam locomotive water got to be in a lot worse shape, especially toward the end of the steam era.