While building some hillsides and adding rocks and Sculptamold I was gearing up to dry brush the rocks after a gray base coat. I decided that I needed to paint the track near the hillsides first since I wanted to spray paint the track but did not want to get overspray on the rocks. But, oops, I had not yet replaced the ties under the track joints. So that took all of Saturday. I had scrap ties from the Atlas flextrack and the Walthers Shinohara turnout ends. Of course I had to thin the Atlas ties a bit (belt sander) and then file off the “spike” nubs to slide them in Perhaps should have had the right thickness wood ties on hand!
So, today was track painting day (5’ x 9’ HO layout). I decided on rattle can paint, using the Rustoleum Camo earth brown. (Still lack the motivation to tackle the new in the box airbrush that will soon not be new.) At first I tried dampening the rail tops with a bit of oil (slightly wetting a wood block). I did a section at a time (maybe 10-12’ of track). Used an exhaust fan in the window with air in from another room (marginal). I won’t describe the cleanup (done just after painting a section) as easy. I used scrap blocks of 1x2 first wet with lacquer thinner, switching to a clean 2nd block and attacking again. Then a couple of solvent wet Masonite blocks to finish the section. It took a bit of elbow grease, especially as the paint dried very quickly and it takes a bit of effort on the turnouts. I was a bit nervous about damaging a turnout with the effort required. I forgot the pre-oiling once and it seemed to make nil difference so I gave that part up. And switched to paint thinner instead of lacquer thinner on the wood and Masonite blocks. I’d guess it took about 8 hours.
It provides a great improvement in my opinion. I had got sorta used to the tie gaps and mismatched tie t
As you report, this is a project that really improves the look of a layout. The prep work is the biggest part of things, as you noted, but worth it.
You mentioned working in sections, but the paint getting dry and causing problems. Try working in even smaller sections, as getting it up before it dries is really important to making that easier.
Also, you mention the wood blocks. I use a 2x4 and stand it on its edge. It’s just about right to hold a paper towel folded around it. I wipe until it gets dirty, then rotate it on the block to get a clean area to wipe with in place. Being more hand sized, it may work better than 1x2 blocks.
Thanks, Mike. Yes, the sections I did were too large, as it got harder as I worked to clean one up, the later parts pretty dry by then. Next time I will do smaller parts and try your 1x2 suggestion. Do you solvent wet the paper towel or not need to because the paint is still wet? working it the way I did is definitely hard but also as mentioned rather abusive to the turnouts; e.g., the amount of force placed on the points to get fairly dry paint off them.
I also realize that I was too focused on coverage at the turnouts and likely over applied paint where the point rails move, even though I taped the point ends at the stock rail contact points. W
A well documented report on track painting - thanks for sharing your experiences. When I came to the track painting step, I also left my nearly new airbrush in the box. Not easy to find color-correct airbrush-compatible paint where I live. As I was concerned with over-spray, I decided to brush paint the trackwork. I used the Dutch Boy brand color “Canoe”, which seemed to imitate dirty ties and rusty rail quite well. A real plus is the cleanup process - just wipe the rail top with a paper towel, as latex paint takes some time to dry. Touch-ups and detail work around turnout parts are easy, too. I have a full arsenal of spray can paints I use to paint and weather structures, but I did not feel confident trying to get the correct look on a permanent surface I would have trouble correcting an over-spray on. I appreciated your comments on re-installing ties at the track section joints - a world of difference, and worth all the effort.
Mostly I worked with a dry towel to pick up the paint while still wet. I did keep some acetone I used when I needed things wetted to pick up drying paint in a few places.
One thing that really does work to remove paint from railheads is a dull utility knife or single-edge razor blade dragged backwards (so the cutting edge won’t dig into the rail). It doesn’t matter how dry the paint is, it comes right off cleanly, and the process goes very fast. I can report absolutely no damage to rail having used this method, and it’s certainly less trouble than masking, using paint remover/thinner, wiping off oil, or using softer materials like wood or hardboard.
Yeah, there’s probably no greater “bang for your buck” in model railroading. I do think, though, that you could have brush painted your track in much less time and with no preparation (masking, oiling rail tops, etc.) and with very little effort to clean the rail tops.
I did all of my track, about 300’, and over 50 turnouts in an estimated 12 hours, using a 1/2" brush and PollyScale paint. I say ‘estimated’ only because it was done whenever I had a few minutes to spare, although I did spend a couple multiple hour sessions when time allowed. A turnout took about 10 minutes and about the same time for 15’ or 20’ of track. Clean-up was a dry rag over my fingertips, and rinsing out the brush. You needn’t be especially careful with the brush, as anything which rusts on the prototype bleeds rust stains onto the tieplates and ties, too. I found it to be a very relaxing task, and, as you discovered, very rewarding.
I found it easy to let the paint dry first, then use a single edge razor blade to remove the dried paint from the tops of the rails. Drag the blade at an angle applying enough pressure to remove the paint, vacuum, then bright boy the track, saves time and is not messy.
For power routing turnouts that depend on contact between the points and stock rails, absolutely. I typically use scraps of stripwood for this purpose, wedging them into the gap between one point and stock rail. I let the other point mask the interface on the other side.
For commercial DCC friendly turnouts, there are jumpers between the point/closure rail assembly and the stock rail, so the points don’t route power. I will usually still mask to allow the points to make some electrical contact in case of a failure with the jumper (which sometimes happens). Unless you want to concern yourself with that, you don’t really have to mask such turnouts (Atlas, Peco insulfrog, current production Micro Engineering or Walthers 83, etc.) at all.
Rob, I have Walthers Shinohara code 83 DCC friendly turnouts and want to clarify something about the masking need. As I recall (I don’t have one uninstalled to turn over and examine) most consider the moveable point rail primary power source is the contact at the stock rail to which closed. Granted, the related fixed closure rail does get direct power from a jumper, so it is fully reliable. Anyway, the point rail also (secondarily) gets power via the hinge (kinda a loose rail joiner) closure/point rail connector but I understood from prior forum comments that the hinge is mainly for mechanical purposes and should not be considered a reliable power source. Maybe another way of saying it is the moveable point rail (not jumpered) gets its power from two mechanical connections, the hinge and the point contact at the stock rail. I presumed the point contact is more reliable than the hinge.
I was interested in this aspect as one DCC site suggested as an option jumpering to the moveable point rails with flexible jumpers. Because of the difficulty, fear of ruining more turnouts than helping (skills question) and folks reporting that they have had few problems, I rely on the point contact with the stock rail, assisted by the Tortoise spring wire.
Therefore, I masked the point contact area when spraying and will touch up within that but leave about 1/4" bare at the contact area as Cody suggests in one of the Virginian project videos. Also masked the hinge and will only lightly paint the exterior of it a bit so as not to flow paint within it.
I thought clarifying this or at least exposing the issue might be useful (if I’ve got the basics correct). It may be a matter of opinion, however. My experience is limited (track in place only 18 months) so I can’t speak to long term reliability.
The power-routing turnouts have removed point masking as an absolute necessity electrically, but masking does help guard against paint becoming a mechanical issue by gumming things up. Since I spray paint, it’s just easier to take a 1/2" wide piece of tape and throw it across the points and the ties directly underneath. Once you’ve finished ballasting, the small bit that is missed by the paint blends in so it’s not as noticeable as it is when you first pluck the tape off.
That may be true. As I noted earlier, I still mask the interface between the point and stock rail so I can hopefully get power from there if the hinge joint fails. I’m not sure either of those is a truly reliable conductor, so redundancy is welcome.
I have a few turnouts built from Central Valley kits. I use a length of decoder wire as a jumper for the points, so don’t bother to mask those as I have reliable power to the points at all times. They have a different setup than most model turnouts, as the stock rails are truly “stock” and do not require notching.
I suppose I should have said earlier that while it may not be 100% necessary to mask points on a DCC friendly turnout, I wouldn’t recommend skipping it unless you have wired around the potential electrical failure there. Also, as Mike Lehman stated, you can still have a mechanical interference from excess paint, again not desirable.
That was my plan too, just to hit the rails using a fine brush. No way I am going to spray paint on the layout, especially with a rattle can.
Question- did you paint the rails before or after ballast was in place? Seems like soaking the rails down with alcohol to apply ballast would not be a good idea if using acrylic paint like Pollyscale.
Ask your dentist if he/she has any old dental picks. Mine gave me a few of them with one broken tip, and some that I could find nothing wrong with but were somehow not good enough for dentistry. I find these are the best tools for cleaning out sticky spots on and under points and throwbars.
Another trick is to cut a small piece of fine sandpaper so that you can slip it under the throwbar, slide it back and forth and clean off stuff that’s stuck in there. Finally, put some Labelle grease under the throwbar to reduce friction even further.
Well, yesterday I decided to (carefully) do a bit of touchup around the points/throwbars and the point rail hinges. I tired to get some Cameo Brown sprayed into a very small jar, with a tad of paint thinner so it would not dry quickly in the jar. Using some “microbrushes” it was not going well, as the paint was too thin to provide easy coverage and then it also started to form strings on the paint so I quit that approach. I switched to some bottled Floquil RR tie brown. It did not want to cover the rail sides readily w/o overapplying but looked better than raw metal when applied lightly. The issue became, even though I though I applied little (I thought), a fair percentage of the Tortoise activated turnouts became a problem, no longer working smoothly and/or not getting fully closed.
The good news is that I think I today overcame my errors. I worked the turnouts many times, including by hand, and tried cleaning under the throwbar with a tiny trowel, adjusted many Tortoise fulcrums for more leverage. It was easier to work on today as the paint was more fully dry. I think the biggest problem was a teeny bit of paint flowing into the clearance space between the throwbar tie and its adjacent (usually T.O. entry end) tie, where the spacing is too often so close there is friction before any paint getting in there. In one case, I took a “sledge hammer” approach of more force by changing the original Tortoise throw wire to 0.032" music wire, a bit stiffer. Edit: a day later I did this to a 2nd one also, though the plywood hole szie was also a bit marginal and warranted some rework. This throw wire upgrade is a definite plus, much stornger in each direction. Not just about preventing derails but also ensuring points electrical contact. If I build another layout, I will use stronger than provided throwout wire on each turnout. It only required d
I painted before ballasting, mainly because I wanted to use the track for a while to ensure that it wuld be trouble free. It’s easy enough to tear out ballasted track when necessary, but the ballast would be lost.
I don’t use a fine brush, though, as a 1/2" brush requires less re-filling. If the bristles are a little on the stiff side, it makes it easier to work the paint around the moulded-on spike heads and other such details. This makes for very fast work.
I don’t use alcohol for ballasting, as I find “wet” water works very well, doesn’t stink-up the layout room, and is cheaper. A little alcohol in a glass, after ballasting, is nice, though. [swg]
Wayne, thanks for responding and can’t argue your final point! But I like the alcohol-soak method a lot better than just wet water for ballasting.
I took a close look at my favorite photos on RaiPictures.Net and realize that the rusty/stained color of rail, ties and ballast varies a whole lot depending on how old the track it is and how much traffic it has seen. So probably no wrong way to go about painting it, just depends on what kind of final look that you want.
Anyway this thread has got me playing around painting some test track with and without ballast in the shop using both a regular brush and an airbrush. I’ll see if using alcohol for ballasting messes up acrylic while I am at it.
I used Micro Engineering code flex track and turnouts on my layout. I soldered jumpers on the turnouts before painting them (I solder feeders to every section of rail, no matter how small, on my layout) and painted them (with an airbrush and Polly S RailRoad Tie Brown) before I installed them so I didn’t worry about masking points. I used Hex Frog Juicers to provide power to the frogs (which work great) because I don’t use switch machines or ground throws (ME turnouts have over center springs that hold the points in the desired alignment). I sprayed the track and turnouts from every angle to hide any shiny rail (including between the points, but keep the paint light to prevent paint from ‘gluing’ the points (or ties and throwbar) together. After the paint had dried, I cleaned the rail head (I use a 2 sided, very fine and super fine grits, emery board); I remember it taking a while but not really difficult (use light pressure and let the tool do the work). When the emery board was eventually clogged, I used alcohol and a toothbrush to clean it and went right back to cleaning the rails. I tried using small squares of cardboard wetted with Lacquer Thinner, and it worked to loosen up any heavy paint, then used the emery board to polish the rails. After this ‘abuse’ the emery board had the perfect amount of grit (slightly worn out so it doesn’t leave scratches in the rail head) so I continue to use it to clean track to this day (it’s been over two years since I painted the track) and I use the side with the finer grit to polish the rails before running trains; I’m still working on the modules so I run trains infrequently). Just because the emery board looks dirty doesn’t mean it is done, it still has enough roughness to clean rail quite nicely (even though some areas of grit are worn kind of thin).
If I found a turnout that had any sign of sluggishness, before or after installing, I first checked to see if the paint had