Grime & Dirt II

I actually have a couple of  before/after images to share. I saw this Fox Valley SOO boxcar at the National Train Show for a very nice price along with four other highly detailed cars. I roll my eyes when I see HO scale freight cars with $35-$45 price tags. Yes they have fantastic detail, but if you actually use them as intended, how well does that detail withstand regular use? Another thing I think many people don't realize is that all that super detail disappears when the car is viewed in a moving train. I personally intend to use these new cars (with fantastic detail) in photos, more than in operations. The camera sees all, and chunky detail is very obvious when viewed in photos. A prime example is in the previous post. The handrails of that Erie Lackawanna RS-3 look way out of scale because they are. They just don't look so bad when viewed in person. And since the loco is not a museum piece but a working loco that will be run regularly, I don't mind the handrails as long as they don't break.

At this point I have already broken 1 stirrup step while getting the shell screwed to the frame and adding extra weight. I'm not going to go into detail on how I weathered these cars. There are great tutorials in the "Rustbucket Forum" and recently INRAIL's blog in Railroad Model Hobbyist so I wont boor you with my fumbling descriptions.

This is only the second freight car that I applied a fade too. I tried to keep it very light because the car would only be a couple of years old.

The rust fairly light too. I kept it to a few areas that would see wear.

I'm thinking the coupler has to much bright rust color, but then it might look this way if it sat a couple of weeks unused.

I don't have a "clean" image of this car, because I was so stoked with acquiring these new cars that I dove right into weathering when I got home.

I kept the weathering light on this one too for the same reasons as for the Soo car. Just a little rust and some dirt. 

Again, no clean image. This is the first car I applied a fade to, it's ok for my first try. This car was a bitch to get disassembled for adding weight and it sustained damage which can be seen up close.

Grime & dirt

Jeff Patterson got me to look into a website called "The weathering Shop" and its associated forum "The Rust Bucket". The people on these sites do weathering, that's all, just weathering, and they are Good, real Good. They even have how too articles, you should check them out. When I have time I'll add a link .
So then Jeff got me into trying some new techniques on weathering, using water mixable oil paints and then my new favorite, powders. AIM weathering powders in particular. Between reading articles on the Weathering Shop, and helping Jeff weather some of his freight cars, I finally caught the bug to weather some of my new freight cars that I picked up and the National Train Show last month. I also weathered a EL RS-3 before the National Show after all, I needed something to run that looked grimy in a cool kinda way.

Since the RS-3 was the first piece of my own that I used powders on, I'll show it first. All weathering below the walkway was done with Acrylic paint. This isn't new to me, but I think this is the best I've done yet. The roof, and hoods were done entirely with powders. I had disassembled the shell, given it a coat of Dulcoat for improving the powders adhesion. Then added a layer of powder, then sealed it with Dulcoat. I used two layers of powder to get the effect you see here.

The pilot was weathered with Acrylics also. Dry brushing on a highlighting color brings out the details.

What I really wanted to show here is the rust color up by the bell. When I added those details at the top of the hood, I brush painted them with plain yellow paint, not a match for the yellow the nose was already painted. The weathering powders blended it all together nicely.

I'll post images of some freight cars next time.