I bought a plastic wood coaling tower kit and I was wondering how to paint it. Would it be plain wood or would it be painted?
the pictures of real wood coaling towers that i’ve seen are black and white so it’s hard to tell but they look unpainted . most of them are pretty big buildings and i’d hate to have the job of painting one !
most of the pictures i’ve seen of model wood coaling towers are unpainted as well
2 minutes after i post this someone will post links to photos of painted coaling towers [:)]
I just built a bachmann coaling tower in HO and painted it flat white with green accents for windows and doors and painted the stairs brown and roof/chute silver and cement gray on what it sits on. Now it needs to be weathered.
I have also seen them brown for wood or gray for cement. Neutral colors work best.
Most of the photos are bw so its kinda hard to tell. So I just used my imagination and it turned out nice.
I would immagine that the wood would be treated like the crossties, e.g creosoted or similar treatment as to avoid rotting… Adding some coal powder and smoke from the engine, they would be quite dark!
sebastiano
Ditto…They mostly looked a lot like the ties on the tracks. [8D]
And what would be a good paint color to simulate creosoted wood?
Acrylic “Burnt Umber” available at Wal-Mart, and other places that carry craft paints. Add a bit of “cinammon” and some light gray, too, but just a tiny bit of each of those. Also, thin the whole mixture into a heavy wash. If you just paint the paint mixture onto the wood, it will not look natural. The idea is to make it look slapped on and stained.
I’m dealing with plastic molded in a dark brown. Should I base coat it with a lighter coat of paint before I apply the wash?
My wood coal tower started out with a Model Power kit that was brown with a bright yellow building. I weathered mine heavily with chalks and dullcote which gave the tower a really gritty coal stained look.
I built the Bachmann Plus kit in N scale, then painted it a light gray. I painted the walkways yellow. Then I washed the entire structure with burnt umber and black. Then I sprinkled some black coal dust where it might collect on walkways and crossbeams. I think it looks OK.
That’s the same tower I’m working on. I’ve also got a Revell MOW shed (my father-in-law built it ages ago, but didn’t paint it.) that has a stack of crossties that I need an appropriate paint for.
What did you use for a base coat on the timbers of the coaling tower?
I just dullcoted the whole model when I built it, then started weathering with chalks and more dullcote until I got it to look like it does. I think I dullcoted a total of 4 times. (VERY light coats!)