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 evolving, which avoids having everything weathered with exactly the same colours. I usually have about a dozen bottle of weathering colours on hand in both types of paint, and most have been in use for years. Here's an example of overspraying a car with a thinned version of its base colour. The bottle to the left is the thinned original paint (a custom mix of Floquil), while the one on the right is some of that already-thinned paint (possibly with a little white added). That bottle will be filled with lacquer thinner before spraying the Dullcoted car, at right:
Not the same car, but the same road and same colour after overspraying:
For adding other effects, a few simple masking devices can be useful. I often do many cars in a session, and these can yield more consistent results and make the task simpler and faster. For a shadow effect on steel boxcars and reefers, all that's required is a piece of cardstock - part of a cereal box will do. Note the overlap of panels on the car's sides - usually they're mirror images from one side of the door to the other. I usually apply the shadowing to the lapped panel, as it's the one sitting at a lower plane, but the key is to apply the paint to only the lapped or lapping panels. That usually means that the panels to one side of the door will be sprayed from the left, and the other side from the right. Decide to which portion you wish to apply the shadow, then simply hold the card against the car's side, tight against the seam line, and make a vertical pass with the airbrush aimed towards the edge of the card. Move the card across the car and spray in the same manner, remembering to flip the position of the card when doing the panels on the other side of the door. The paint can be a darkened version of the car's original colour or a grey, black, or dark brown - the darker the paint, the more pronounced will be the effect. If your paint is well-thinned, you can make successive applications until you get an effect with which you're satisfied.Here's an almost new car with a light shadow effect - it looks lighter in the photo than in person (Clicking on the photos will give an enlargement and clicking on that an even bigger image - that generally shows the effect well enough...along with the mistakes) :
For a more extreme effect, I made about a dozen cardstock masking devices to fit specific manufacturers' cars. Each one has a notation on it regarding the cars for which it's suitable. The mask is simply held against the car's side (the height at which it's held can be varied - higher for dirtier ) and a suitable dirt colour airbrushed on - the pass(es) can be vertical or horizontal.
The car then gets a general over-all weathering and a spray of dust and road grime along the lower edges and trucks and underframe. For this step, the car should be rolled back and forth as you spray, so that the wheel faces are evenly covered. The wheels on the car shown below should, however, not be rust-coloured.
When I back-dated my layout, that car needed to be re-lettered with an earlier scheme, and the weathering is now lighter, as the car represents one that's somewhat newer. (Re-painted the wheels, too.)
Pretty-well all cars, even relatively new ones, will show wheelspray on their ends (locomotives and passenger cars, too). To simplify that procedure, I made a jig from sheet styrene. It fits around a car's end, and allows the coupler to protrude. There are two tapered slots cut into the bottom edge, and the sides of the jig automatically place the slots above where the rails would be:
Simply place the jig over the car's end and spray, using your choice of dirt colour:
Another way to make a freight car look used but not abused is to vary the colours used to paint the cars, even if they're the same roadname. After all, cars bought at different times could be older or newer or the paint formula changed from a previous order. In addition to that, the area where the car normally runs or its particular service will dictate the weathering colours to use. For example, my home road ordered 100 boxcars from the manufacturer and they were delivered pretty-much all in one lot. I painted them all the same colour, but varied the shade by adding different colours to the original mix as I painted. They were further varied by adjusting the weathering, both in the various colours used and the amount applied. For example, a new car, not yet completely lettered:
...and several others, all from the same order:
Here's the Pennsy X-29 boxcar shown in the earlier photo with the full-side mask for adding stains at the rivet lines. After the initial treatment, it got several washes of thinned PollyScale paint (distilled water and a drop or two of dish detergent to break the surface tension of the water). That toned-down the airbrushed weathering, but an additional airbrush weathering was needed to blend the weathering together - mostly the dirt and grime along the lower portions of the car. That resulted in a quite dirty car:
While I didn't mind the well-weathered appearance, I later decided to add some interest to the car with re-weigh data, and also made an attempt to lighten the car's appearance just a bit:
Wood-sided freight cars generally weather in the same manner as steel cars, but damage planks in their sides are often replaced. This results in newly-repaired cars having some distinct variations in the colour, as on this factory-painted Accurail car. I used a fine brush to pick out some of the boards using a different shade of boxcar red, then weathered it using my airbrush. The re-weigh data was then added, along with some chalk scribblings:
I ran into some difficulty when weathering these re-built Tyco cars, shown here before the mishap, when some dirt in the air line caused the paint to spatter:
A further overspray with the cars' original colour helped somewhat, but still wasn't completely satisfactory:
I finally decided to try some additional weathering with artist's pastels, which I'd not before used. They come in a stick form, and are basically chalk and pigment held together with oil. To use them for weathering, I simply rubbed them over some medium sandpaper, then used an old soft brush to apply the resultant powder. I left several boards untouched to represent recent repairs, then gave the cars a light airbrushing of road grime to soften the contrast somewhat.
The pastels seem to stick well without a clear overspray, and stand up well to handling.
There are, of course, many more techniques and media for weathering, and some will apply more than others, depending on the era which you're modelling and the look which best suits your tastes.
Wayne
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 rolling it back and forth with my free hand.For locomotives, I put them on the rails of an old Bowser turntable bridge. With power leads clipped to the rails, and while holding the loco to keep it from running away, power is applied and the moving wheels are painted/weathered as appropriate. For steam locos (all of my locos save one) the loco should also be moved back and forth as the drivers are turning, in order for the leading- and trailing-truck wheels to be evenly covered.
On cars with metal wheels (and locos, of course), you'll probably want to clean the treads after weathering, but the paint doesn't get into the area where the axle ends turn inside the sideframes, so rolling quality isn't affected.To clean the treads, I put the car on its roof, then touch a small brush, laden with lacquer thinner, to the tread, then, while turning the other wheel on the same axle, hold a clean rag or tissue against the moistened tread. This is somewhat time consuming, but less so than removing wheels to place them in a masking jig, then later re-intalling them in the trucks. It also minimises the amount of handling, especially of the sideframes, which don't really hold paint all that well unless you first blasted them with abrasive. For the initial painting of the wheels, prior to weathering, I use a brush and don't remove the wheels then, either. I can paint all of the wheels on a car, front and back, plus the axles in less time than it would take to remove the wheels and put them in a jig for airbrushing. And in my era, the front of the wheels are oily black, while the backs and axles are usually rusty. With practice, the only clean-up required is of the paint brush when you're done. Many of my cars have their original plastic wheels, and for those, I don't bother to clean the treads at all. It hasn't yet caused a problem.
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.
Cisco KidWhat 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.
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.
Cisco Kid...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.
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.
That's a quick and effective solution.
doctorwayne 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,.......
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,.......
- Douglas
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.