Refinery paint

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

My refinery project is nearing completion. I have been building sub assemblies of tanks, piping, towers, walkways and platforms out of various kits. I’m almost ready to paint. I’ve looked at many pictures of real refinerys and models and have pretty much figured out what colors I want everything to be, but I have a couple of questions about the paint to use.

First, should I be using flat or gloss paint? I would imagine tanks like the Walthers Oil Storage Tank in real life would start out with a gloss paint but that as it weathered it would lose some sheen. I have driven by refinerys to get a look but can’t get close enough to tell. I was even thinking of leaving it white plastic and hitting it with dullcote.

There are so many of these to do that I’m tempted to use shake cans instead of the airbrush. I haven’t used these on models before. Any suggestions here as to brands, and a color for the silver tanks?

2

Hello all,

As far as gloss versus flat I have seen both used on prototypical refinery equipment.

Spillage and oxidation would indeed effect the gloss finish of the materials in question.

Weathering, including the used of dullcote, would add realism.

Depending on the chemicals being refined spillage can be replicated by using dullcote. Think of the over spill around car fuel filler areas where the fuel creates a flat or oxidized area.

For silver I like to use Aluminium colored rattle can paints. The two that I have had success with are Rust-Oleum #7715 Aluminium and Do it Best 780131 Aluminium (True Value house brand).

If you can, please post some photos of your work. Love to see how it turns out.

Hope this helps.

3

It seems to me that glossiness just doesn’t scale down well. So my kneejerk reaction is to do “everything” flat.

But if you think I’m wrong:

Perhaps you could paint a sample flat and a sample glossy and see which you prefer.

Ed

4

You’re correct that a lot of oil refinery paint starts out gloss or semi-gloss, but usually doesn’t stay that way for long in such a harsh and grimy environment.

The newer plants within the refinery I worked at were painted tan or a pinkish tan with most of the vessels, tanks and piping all the same color. So too were most of the stairways, ladders and catwalks, though some were grey, alum or even black.

Some of the piping carrying hazardous product was of a different color for easy identification, like H2S lines being yellow and nitrogen blue. Pumps, motors, turbines and other equipmet were a hodge podge of colors, greens, gray, blue, white, with most hot equipment often just a dirty rusty dark brown or black. The older plants were mostly of greys and the alum. colors, with mostly black furnaces, much more grimy and rusty too.

Much of the piping in both newer and older plants are insulated and the insulation is encapsulated with thin aluminum.

Boiler feed water make up tanks were white and so too were some of the smaller nitrogen storage tanks.

Fire fighting equipment, monitors and associated piping were painted red.

With such an industry in a constant state of flux with regular turnarounds, repairs, added equipment and upgrades it was not uncommon for a new tank or vessel to be some shade of light green, or newer fire resistant equipment like motorized valves to be purple. Maybe such a jumble of colors might not look good on a model railroad.

Personally I prefer using my airbrush for a project with lots of nooks and crannies, but then I’ve never mastered spray bomb painting.

Happy modeling and good luck with your “boilin’ oil” plant, regards, Peter

5

For everything you would possible want to know about painting oil and gas facilities, here’s a link to “Coatings Standards and Committees for the International Oil & Gas Industry”

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjKv5XjqJDSAhUnxVQKHezeC-kQFggyMAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhse.nigc.ir%2FPortal%2FFile%2FShowFile.aspx%3FID%3D7d721df8-9a6c-4bc5-bcf5-102c1c798906&usg=AFQjCNGNbjRuw_J9Io94YvOC6rFoI_nVJw

Lol, it won’t help a bit though.

I checked the standard specifications that we use for High Preformance Coatings in our industrial work, and virtually all of our specifications call for a top coat with MPI Gloss Level 6, a “tradional gloss” between “semi-gloss” and “high gloss.” The epoxy paint will quickly fade to dull. A urethane coating will retain its gloss a bit longer, but will also eventually fade.

Ray

6

I used to live north of a refinery and rust on the pipes and black oil over spray everywhere is what i modeled and saw and of course a blackened canal of water.the tanks were white at one time with some siver ones mixed in all covered at different points with black overspray that was rather dull at most times except when fresh. I model what is real for my time span. blue lakes etc were and had to be a very long time ago.

7

Thanks for all of the info. I have a much better idea of the direction that I want to go now.

I know I don’t want to use “hobby” paint on this project. My next step will be to go to Lowes or Home Depot to see what they have. I’ve also been wanting to try some craft paint in the airbrush. The white tanks may be a good test for that.

Rick