Filosophy Phriday

[BATMAN]

Thank you all for the good thoughts on this so far and the really fine examples posted. I learned even more about weathering.

For me worrying about ruining the value of a piece of rolling stock by the possibility screwing up a weathering job just doesn't hold water. If you are looking for investments I would suggest toy trains are the wrong vehicle for a good return on your dollar. My view on "purchases for pleasure" is that I look at the hours of enjoyment for the cost and what they are worth when I am done with them won't matter even if I am still alive. MRR offers a very good return on cost when I think of the hundreds of hours I have spent in the train room.

I have had the oppoutunity to step inside some roundhouse and other similar engine shops that had been in service for a hundred years give or take. My boots could not come in contact with the concrete floor if my life depended on it. A very thick layer of dirt and grease lay btween the floor that was poored a hundred years ago and the bottom of my workboots. It was like walking on the thick rubber mats at the ice rink.

I am old enough to remember dirty plces like this and the railyard I am trying to emulate was way worse than this in so many ways. Thank goodness for modern environmental regs.

 

[Lone Wolf and Santa Fe]

I think one thing that nobody mentioned is that with this thing called the internet you can find pictures of almost every car or locomotive and see exactly what they look like so you can use the picture as an example of how and where to add weathering. Go to your favorite search engine and click on "IMAGES" and then search. Of course if you are modeling an era different than when the picture was taken you need to make adjustments.

j........

[Steven S]

BATMAN

Thank goodness for modern environmental regs.

 

We tend to take our clean air for granted and assume it has always been this way.  But here's what Chicago looked like in the 1940s...

 

The Merchandise Mart in '46...http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P03134.jpg

The Merchandise Mart today...http://file26.mafengwo.net/M00/3F/ED/wKgB4lNLjBuAZjXTAAHZPpff8tQ23.jpeg

 

The Art Institute in '41...http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P02197.jpg

And today...http://www.saic.edu/media/saic/gfx/about/buildinghistory/building_history_badge.jpg

 

The LaSalle-Wacker building in 1948...http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P03998.jpg

And today...https://www.multihousingnews.com/Photos/450px-Civic_Opera_House_060528-2.jpg

 

Steve S

[SPV]

I model 1907, so weathering looks quite a bit different than in more modern times.  For freight cars, grafiti obviously doesn't exist yet and most cars are all wood, so rust is much less prominent than on metal-body cars.

Here are some freight cars that I've done a little work on recently (a mix of plastic and wood kits and modified ready-to-run cars from Blackstone):

These cars are generally weathered first with washes of paint close to the cars' body color to fade the lettering, followed by Bragdon powders, and then a shot of Dullcoat.  Overall, I try to keep the cars' relative age and environment in mind.  For example, UA&P boxcar 1061 is probably about 20 years older than the SPV boxcars behind it.  Since my freelanced roads are set in the mountains and desert of southern Utah, dustiness is the predominant effect, with some dirt and mud kicked up around the trucks, and plenty of soot on the roofs from spending lots of time behind steam locomotives. 

Speaking of steam locomotives, they look a bit different in 1907 as well.  This was a time when locomotives were well cared for, and many were frequently cleaned and polished.

#20 is a good example of this:

#20, a significantly modified Blackstone C-19, has a clean Russia Iron boiler jacket and freshly polished brass work.  Note that she does, however, have some dust kicked up around the pilot, running gear, and tender trucks, as well as some grime on the smokebox and soot on the cab roof.  A closer-up look would reveal some cinders on the running boards as well.

Sister engine #19 looks to have spent a little more time out on the road lately and is a bit dirtier.

#16 has mostly seen yard service lately and thus is the dirtiest of the SPV engines.  Truth be told, #16 was the first of my engines to get weathered and it came out somewhat heavier than I had wanted, but I can live with it.

 

Chris

[doctorwayne]

Some very nice examples of weathering have been shown, and each of us have our own methods and preferences about the degree of weathering needed.
If you have an airbrush, it offers an easy entrance into weathering even if your skills are still pretty basic.

This car represents a pretty new one on my late '30s layout, but I wanted it to look at least a bit used.  To achieve a not-new look, I simply selected a boxcar red - doesn't matter too much if it's the same one originally used on the car or not.  Pour a small amount into the jar used on your airbrush, then add some thinner - lots of thinner.  The mixture should be about 90-95% thinner.
Take a few vertical practice passes on a scrap of paper or cardboard, then do the car:  quick vertical strokes, overlapping a bit, and don't forget the ends and roof.  This will do little or nothing to the car's colour, but it will tone-down the starkness of the lettering.  Now it's no longer a new car.

I also added a little dust and road dirt along the bottom edge.  All you need is a light earth colour, well-thinned, and a place where you can roll the car back-and-forth as you spray.  I use an old Bowser turntable, but a 15" length of 1"x2" will suffice.  Place the car with the wheels nearest you over the edge of the wood, then use your free hand to roll the car back and forth as you spray.  This keeps the wheels turning, so that they accumulate the "dirt" over their entire face.  Flip the car around and repeat for the other side.

Before you put the airbrush away, don't forget the car's ends.  They tend to get streaks of wheelspray from adjacent cars when in motion.  A simple masking device makes this an easy job, allowing you to do at least a couple of cars per minute.

Here's the device I use.  It's .060" sheet styrene, the interior width just enough to accommodate any rolling stock in your particular scale.  The cut-out at the centre bottom is at coupler height, and the two tapered slots are for the wheelspray effect:

...and this shows it in use.  Same well-thinned paint and same quick vertical passes.  Check and repeat as you feel necessary:

I used both light and dark colours on this one, but it's still fairly subtle.  The distance you hold the mask from the end will affect the width and the definition of the spray effect:

...not much here:

...and fairly indistinct on this one:

...and more noticeable here:

When the paint is well-thinned, it helps to prevent accidental over-weathering, at least at first.  This allows you to build-up the weathering effects gradually. 

Weathering paint can also add dimensionality to a car.  The steel sides of a boxcar aren't really all that thick, and, over time, that becomes more apparent.  To achieve this shadow effect, I used a colour darker than the car - anything from a darker version of the car's original colour right up to black, well-thinned of course.  I used a business card as a mask, holding it against the car's side at each vertical row of rivets.  Cover the panel to either side of the joint line on one side of the door, then, on the other side of the door, reverse the position of the card - in other words, spray either the area where the rivets are visible or where they're hidden by the card.  On the car below, the seam between panels is between the paired rows of rivets, and it looks as if the widely-spaced rivets were the ones covered, so each side of the door was sprayed towards that end of the car:

When I first got into weathering, I used masks like the one shown below.  Each is light cardstock, notched with slots similar to the mask for car ends.  I have several of these, each spaced to match the panel lines of a particular maker's car:

This car was done with a similar mask, but the effect was too stark for my tastes:

I eventually managed to tone it down a bit, using an overspray of well-thinned boxcar red, but still a bit much, I think:

This is the car shown previously under the custom-cut mask.  It got some very heavy weathering, (sprays, washes, and more sprays) over a period of several years, and is probably one of my "dirtiest".  However, even though it's now got more paint on it than when it was at it's dirtiest (over-weathered for sure), I'm not overly dispeased with it:

An overspray of boxcar red pulled it back from a total repainting, and the fresher re-weigh info, along with a cleaning attempt by a switchman trying to discern the car number made it acceptable to me.

Wayne

[hon30critter]

Hi Wayne.

Thanks for sharing your techniques. As always, another good tutorial from the master.

Dave