This is going to give me some insperation. I think I’m going to try this out on one of my better cars and then move into a cheap Athearn gp50
I don’t own an airbrush. I make do with rattle cans. A few things anyone can do to any car. First off, you can paint the undercarriage. I know it doesn’t show, not nearly as much as the roof, but you can see it. Two inch wide masking tape wrapped around the car keeps the paint off the sides. Remove the trucks, mask the couplers, and spray the entire under carriage with gray auto primer from a rattle can. Dark gray and light gray works for me. The paint kills the plastic gleam and blends in the steel weight. While you have the dark gray auto primer handy you can paint the roofs of heavy weight passenger cars and cabeese, and any other places that need a good tar paper look. Then paint the trucks to kill the shiny black plastic look. I use red auto primer, looks just like rust red. And brush paint the faces of the wheels with grimy black for older friction bearing trucks and a light tan or mud color for the modern roller bearing trucks.
And finally you can give the entire car a shot of DullCote. It kills the plastic gleam and tones down the overly bright toy like colors of low end train set cars. It makes the car look sun faded.
Hello All,
Nice work!
Very subtle. I like it.
Hope this helps.
Good going with the excellent posts and info guys! [Y][:D]
I’ll keep it brief.
For overall, blend, and spot paint jobs the airbrush is my “go to”.
However, for weathering I enjoying mixing an applying weathering washes with acrylic paint and paint brushes.
For mixing multiple colors, discarded pill trays and see-thru trays are convenient to use. I still have Pollyscale paints from years back that I prefer to thin with distilled water. I use the 3 colors below to represent the typical weathering seen on American east coast passenger trains, based on photos and real life observations. (not shown: Engine black and Reefer white mixes are also utilized)
I pour a very small amount of color into each tray’s compartment, then thin each approximately 60% to 90%. The passenger car underframes are placed upisde down on my table, and I apply each wash using vertical strokes only. Because the wish is so thin, capillary action does a nice job of filling in the nooks and crannies. Trucks are also weathered.
The underframe in the photo is for a Rivarossi Budd unit.
BEFORE & AFTER samples Walthers passenger car trucks:
Metalized Rivarossi Budd Coach with Weatherwashed underframe and light weathering on fluted section.
Ringo,
I use a variety of the methods mentioned here. I think you have the most important part already - you have a great eye and a sense of color and balance. Trust your instincts which seem to be spot on…Experiment with some other techniques to expand your repertoire of weathering methods.
Guy
The PSR SD Div has a Youtube channel, and the below link includes a clinic by Pete Steinmetz about weathering using Pan Pastels. It starts at about 1:24. Pete includes information about brushes, scrubbers, erasers, and other tools he uses. I think it’s really nice. https://youtu.be/kW3EHkgB-Oo
Heres an update for you guys, got a litte adventurious and went ahead and weathered a p2k and 2/3 of my genesis’s. Theres areas I need to work on but all in all not a bad start and I am very happy with how easy its been!
Thank you all for giving me inspiration to continue in this hobby!
Heres how my new cat likes the layout, haha!
I’ve seen a lot of over done weathing jobs, and of course freight cars of the present often look horrible. It’s one of a number of reasons I prefer the late 1970’s. Otherwise I’d have to learn to be an “Xtreme” weathering expert to have a train anything approaching realistic.
That said, I’ve seen some excellent video’s on weathering with pastels and it looks like a great way to get realism and have more control over the process. Mainly what I’m going to need are freight cars of varying degree’s of road grime. Not complete rust buckets with patches and graffiti. I don’t envy modern modelers at all - no thanks.
@Ringo88. Our “new” cat, a one year old kitten Fergie (cause she likes to lick our toes!) is not allowed near the layout. She would wreck expensive models that would cost too much to replace. Door shut. The older half Maine coon is allowed, she no bother.
Since my layout is in the open at our apartment I figured I’d get jack used to it so he doesn’t toss anything off! at 15 weeks hes no bother at all, he likes to stop them with his paw
Really swell - The cat I mean!
The weathering is very nice too. 
He’s alright, hahah!