Tony Koester, in this months Model Railroader reported on a new weathering product call PanPastels. Tony showed how he can weather a locomotive (HO Scale, of course) in less than seven minutes, and 22 freight cars in 45 minutes.
So I thought I would give them a try
PanPastels are made by Colorfin. They are artists pastels, but instead of coming in a hard crayon-like stick, they come powdered in a small tubs. They are applied by gently dragging foam applicator along the tub, then applying it to the surface. If you buy a “kit” several foam applicators of various shapes and sizes are included. Otherwise you can use foam swabs, or even Q tips.
One of the advantages of these is that the colors come with different opacities, dark, tint, shade, so you can easily make the equivalent of a thin wash. The real advantage is they are very easy to apply, the process is ultra quick, and requires no clean up. You can use the same applicator for all colors. Just wipe it on a clean on a paper towel.
I used two kits: Grays, Grime, and Soot, which includes various shades (and opacities) of grays, grime and soot, and the Rust and Earth kit:
You can get these from a host of vendors, including Amazon, Scenic Express, and Scale Hobbyist.
If you have a glossy surface, you need to first apply a flat finish. I used DullCoat, followed with a hairdryer (I am fundamentally impatient).
To see how well these worked, I started with a newly purchased Atlas Trainman Frisco Box car. It took about six minutes to do the car body, and about 4 minutes 22 seconds to do the car floor. This includes opening the PanPastel Packages, applying the Dull Coat, drying the Dull Coat, applying the PanPastels, and putting the package away.
Here is the before (Note also did the trucks and couplers):
Here is the floor:
For another example, I did the floor of a lionel X31:
I weathered a Lionel Truss Bridge in about fifteen minutes, and applied rust, and weathering to 40 feet of PRR Pipe railing in about 10 minutes. For the bridge I applied an overall patina of grime and rust “shade”, and then hit the rivets with a more opaque rust by just dragging a fine foam applicator across their tops
No, you aren’t going to get SIRT quality weathering with this technique, but it sure makes the cars, locos, and your structures look far more realistic than they were when they came out of the box
Two final comments:
1) You can easily undo this, by vigorously rubbing on the pastels. A pencil eraser helps.
2) You can seal your weathering with DullCoat, but then a) you can't undo it, and b) you will make the weathering less noticeable. My experience is the un sealed pastels are quite durable to normal handling. Note the use of the word "vigorously," above
