Good Morning,
I am in great need of matching my polyscale railroad tie brown, but there is no longer a store nearby that I can run too easily.
There is a Michaels that is close. Is there a close match to Poly scale railroad tie brown that can be found in the cheap tubes of acrylics? Is there a couple of colors that would mix well to make a good match?
I have had to add a turn out to my layout to accomidate a coaling tower and I found that my RR Tie brown has dried up.
Thank you in advance for your time and answers.
Ties don’t have to match and rarely do unless brand new. When I hand lay track I stain the ties any dark shade first, just to color the side and ends. After they are glued down, I sand off all the top stain to insure that they are all level. Then I re-stain just the tops. (I like laying track from a center line so I don’t hide the center line by staining the roadbed too.)
At first I re-stained the tops with the grandkids’ marking pens and liked the variety of colors. When I found it difficult to purchase the browns and greys separately, I found that a very small foam paint brush dipped in acrlyic worked fine and I could mix any colors I wanted.
The same idea should work on plastic ties, just taking longer to paint individually with rail in place. Use a variety of browns, grey-browns, and silver greys. More dark brown for newer, well maintained track and more silver grey for older trackage.
Thanks for your note and your advise. I have done this to some extent but I would like to start out with a coat or RR Tie brown.
I was hoping to get the base coat to match the rest of my layout.
I use brown and black leather dye mixed four parts brown to one part black and heavily diluted with isopropyl alcohol. To highlight the details and grain use a diluted wash of black leather dye or india ink. You can vary the ratios or applications and get a subtle variety of shades. This works great on wooden ties. For plastic ties a base coat of white plus washes of this mixture and a wash of black leather dye or india ink (very diluted) will probably work. These methods are much more convenient and cheaper than using Pollyscale paints.
You’ll have a hard time matching craft paint. I’d just order a couple bottles. Tower Hobbies online has the best price for Floquil and Polly Scale. A lot of people use the roof brown instead of the railroad tie brown.