Ques. for those who like to “grime up” their cars…
I have begun to pick off glaringly bright cars after I have built run and terminated a train in a session. That way I will work through the whole roster of cars and eventually get most weathered in some degree.
Today I will begin by putting on a base coat of enamel matte and some grime to hold the weathering powders and pastels. Usually I just do one car at a time with a spray can, but now have begun learning to use the airbrush (the spray can matte is unsatisfactory and often needs covering with lots of weathering…not exactly what I want on every car).
What is a good mix or percent of clear matte to grime, mud, or other blackish enamel colours that you have used? Or do you use two separate passes/applications of clear and then colour? I will also thin with lacquer thinner as usual. Thanks for any tips.
After painting and lettering a car, I airbrush it with Dullcote, then apply the weathering. If you’re modelling a fairly new car, mix Dullcote and Glosscote to get a semi-gloss finish that’s suitable for a not-new but not-too-old car, and apply that prior to weathering. I don’t Dullcote cars after weathering, as it usually makes the finish too uniform - this is especially true for cars that have been finished with a semi-gloss. Real freight cars are painted with gloss paint, and it takes some time for the gloss to lose its shine, even if the car gets dirty.
A useful first step in weathering (and sometimes almost the only step for depicting newer cars) is to spray them with a well-thinned (90-95% thinner) over-coating of a colour the same or similar to the car’s basic colour. This has the effect of toning down the starkness of the lettering, which is usually white on a darker background. For a newer car, adding a similarly-thinned application of dust/road grime along the bottom of the car and a little wheelspray on the ends will usually be sufficient - when doing the sides of the car in this last step, move the car back and forth as you spray, to keep the application on the wheel faces uniform.
For a slightly more well-used look, I like to apply a shadow spray - this is most effective on flat-sided steel cars, such as boxcars or reefers. Use greys or browns, or even darkened versions of the car’s original colours. As with any weathering paint, it should be well-thinned - it’s much easier to make successive applications to build-up the effect than it is to remove a too-heavy application.
For paints, I use Floquil or PollyScale, and usually start with blacks, browns, and greys. However, when I’ve painted a bunch of freight cars or buildings or pretty much anything, and have a little of a custom-mixed colour left over, I dump it into the already existing weathering colours - this way, the weathering colours are always evo
Thanks, Wayne. Those are really great examples. I will save the post to refer to the photos time and again I am sure.
Thanks also for the fine tips. I really like the template or masks you keep on hand to use over again.
I always have one main ques. when I see these great jobs, however…what about gummed up/painted up wheel sets and couplers. I have always been removing both couplers and wheel sets and trucks and weathering them separately…very time consuming. You seem to be suggesting spraying right at the trucks and couplers which extend below your masking. Do you ever have movement problems? I imagine you wipe off the wheelsets after with solvent???
Because the weathering paint is so heavily thinned, it’s unlikely to gum up couplers. I prefer to use it to dull the somewhat shiny appearance of new Kadees, but if you construct a jig for doing the end spray, you could modify it to include an enclosure for the coupler. This particular weathering is almost universal for any type of car in any era, and with the jig, I usually line up as many cars as will fit in the spray booth (7 or 8 I think) and do the ends, one after another, then flip the cars around and do the opposite ends. Probably the biggest batch I’ve done in one session was 48 cars, and this really helped to make the work go quickly.
I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but I often change colours during painting sessions, and unless I’m switching between water-based and lacquer-based paints, very seldom need to disassemble the airbrush for cleaning or even need to spray thinner through. Part of the key to this is careful planning of the order in which things are to be painted. For example, Glosscote some cars for decaling, then Dullcote others in preparation of weathering. Next I might paint a couple of white reefers, then some yellow ones, then perhaps an orange brick structure. That could be followed by boxcars in various shades of boxcar red, then perhaps some underbodies in some form of black, then on to the weathering with a multitude of colours and shades.
You can certainly weather the trucks separately if you wish, but if your weathering is especially heavy or light, or of a particular colour for certain cars, then you need to keep track of which ones belong where. By leaving them on the car, the degree and type of weathering will be consistent for the entire car, and by leaving the wheels in place, you’ll be able to weather them evenly by rolling the car back and forth as you paint. I do this on a foot-long block of wood for rolling stock - dropping the near side wheels over the edge, then rolli
Thanks again. Well, that will speed things up for me. I have been reluctant to spray around moving parts, but I suppose I am thinking of paint being thicker than it is when I will be airbrushing with seriously thinned paints.
Don’t rule out ink washes and the effects alcohol has on flat paint. I don’t particularly wash the “whole” can in ink, but allow the ink to race up seams. It works best on unpainted cars, and like paint, is best to build up a few coats. It appears way dark at first, but dries lighter. I find the ink wash very helpful for doors, roofs, and ends, along with wood refers.
Yes, thanks, Tom. I have used ink before and with some success. I haven’t tried it in a while because I was not so skillful and had to go over to remove “drops” that appeared.
What ratio India ink to water or alcohol do you use? I have kept upping it to get the job done faster, but that may be my problem. I suppose I should go for several applications as well.
Another question I forgot to ask doctorwayne is just how he has the paint adhere to Delrin type trucks. Does the enamel base paint stick well? I have never had success weathering a truck until I “sandblast it” with my mini blaster to turn it grey-black first and give it a good surface.
I don’t know if I can give an exact ratio, but if memory serves me, it was like an oz of 90% alcohol and about 10 drops of ink. I use a regular paint brush and load it , then barely touch the edge of the crack. It really helps if the car is new and smooth. It doesn’t take a whole lot to do it’s purpose, and going with multiple coats in some places and not others helps with sharp contrasting issues.
I’m going to give using some some acrylic artist paint mixed with alcohol a whirl tonight to see how well it works with rust in a seam. I think ‘some’ rust is almost a necessity in some amount on a good 50% of the cars, but not overdoing it is the hardest part.
Paint doesn’t stick all that well to Delrin trucks, and I only recently began sandblasting sideframes. However, even though my cars cycle on and off the layout at staging yards (going into their respective boxes when they’re taken off), there’s little need to touch the trucks, even when returning them to the layout, and the weathering generally stands up well.
Found this new way to cover couplers is handy…cutting a small slit or slit and notch in the open end of the little plastic containers for Kadee coupler springs…and fitting them on.
Bumping this to emphasize Wayne’s point. Applying the same basic car color can also be used not just for toning down lettering. Ive learned that when removing lettering from rolling stock, it is never really possible, for me anyway, to ever exactly match the base paint, whether it be by color or sheen. That’s okay, because small thin streaks of dry brushed close-to-exact-match paint color can look like fading paint. Also, washing rolling stock with a thinned base color that’s just off a bit tends to also make the paint look uneven, since it will cover the car better in some places than others.
Sometimes, simply representing faded paint looks better than applying a lot of weathering colors. Applying a uniform coating of weathering over a uniform body color or sheen doesn’t always look the most effective, IMO.
I use powdered charcoal, usually brushed on fairly heavy then partly removed with a soft paper towel so it many sticks around the rivets, grooves etc. on the car, and tones down the white of the lettering a little. Once you get it the way you want, you can spray the car with flat finish to seal it in, the charcoal won’t ‘dissolve’ like say chalk weathering. Then I add extra colors (rust etc.) with pastel chalks - the little square box ones from the LHS.
