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.