I don’t know if you’re adressing me or the starter of the thread, but I just cleaned the wieghts with rubbing alcohol and painted them with Floquil engine black. Once they were glued in, they were weathered along with the rest of the car parts.
Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself…[8D]
Well, after that nice comment coming from you, you’ve encouraged me to post the last picture of the finished Milwaukee box car.
Now if I can just get the courage to put the weathering bru***o my Santa Fe RR-23 reefer, I’ll be fine. Any hints where I can find color proto pictures of these???
BTW, your layout looks superb! The overall weathered look is striking and extremly well done. I like it!
Here’s a shot of some weathered Walthers tank cars.
The weathering is a combination of Floquil Rust (brush dipped in thinner, then in the Rust), a blacki***hin wash of Floquil thinner that I use to clean brushes (provides a great dirty look after a few brushes have been cleaned in it), and a lot of pastel chalks, all set with Dullcote. I painted the couplers and wheels with a less-thinned Rust, and used the brush cleaning thinner and thinned rust to wash over the trucks.
Surprisingly, the Floquil paint washes didn’t attack the plastic except for on the top of one car, where the crazed surface (also weathered) looks like some spilled asphalt from carelessness on the loading rack.
Aggro’s being modest, I think. I’m pretty sure you were addressing him but I’ll chime in with an answer anyway.
I didn’t paint the weights on these cars. That was done by the assembler before I received the cars for the addition of resistors on the wheels and weathering. I really don’t know what kind of paint was used and I don’t think I want to. I am pretty sure, though, that the weights weren’t cleaned before painting but should have been.
On other cars like this (with exposed weights), I’ve cleaned them with whatever dishwashing detergent was handy, dried them thoroughly, and painted them with the closest match I could find (a perfect match isn’t real important here as the weights can hardly be seen).
One important tip though: do be careful to paint the edges of the weights while you’re at it. In most cases, these weights don’t fit perfectly and unpainted edges will show if they’re not painted. I believe Murphy’s Law says that the weights will therefore fit a lot better if their edges are painted.
Chuck
Great job!!!
I have some Walthers H.O. enclosed auto racks and want to weather the side panals
and haven’t a clue on how to get the fine details (like the simulated holes) to come out right. I have tried all sorts of mixes of paint washes and India ink washes (even some washes thinned with alcohol) but they all come out too heavy looking. Any hints?
[#welcome] to the MR forum, trainman (or do you prefer ‘jim’ or ‘jim2001’?).
Have you tried casein colors? You say that everything you’ve tried comes out “too heavy looking”. Casein may be your solution as it can be applied as a very, very light wash and is essentially translucent. Somebody here has said “it’s all about layering”. Casein makes layering pretty easy.
Another nice thing about casein (as compared to acrylics) is that it has a longer “working” time. I’ve even been able to change my mind and remove casein (with warm water) after the paint has apparently completely dried. Now that was within a few hours of applying it; removing it after a couple of days would probably require a chisel.
The worst thing about casein is that I’ve had trouble finding it. I did get a tip from someone else on this forum that casein is available from http://www.misterart.com/. Look under Art Supplies > Painting > Casein. You will want the Shiva casein paints but avoid their “Basic Paint Set” – wrong colors for most weathering. Go for the individual tubes in more appropriate colors (siennas, umbers, black, white, etc.) at http://www.misterart.com/store/view/001/group_id/541/Shiva-Casein-Paints.htm.
Disclaimer: I’m not endorsing Mister Art as I haven’t ordered from them yet. I try to be frugal about such things (OK, cheap) and I was waiting until I ran out of the essential acrylic colors. I’m just about there and have some projects coming up that I might well ruin with acrylics so
I use a combination of pastel chalks (I found a great set at an art store with just earth colors), acrylic washes, and an airbrush to weather the N scale hoppers on my 1956 PRR Middle Division. Below (pardon the scan quality; my scanner was on its last legs when I did this) are some of my hopper fleet, including some PRR H21a and GLa hoppers from Bowser, an Atlas 55-ton USRA hopper, and two MT 2-bay hoppers. The Waddell Coal hopper, though really neat, is kind of incorrect for my purposes. There were only 4 painted just like it (the other two had a different scheme), and they spent their lives on the New York, Ontario, and Western in the early (not mid-to-late) 1950s. My dad, however, is a serious NYO&W fan, so this is my tribute to him.
