I have weathered quite a few cars and locos. But most of the time I followed the “intuitive school” of weathering. In other words my weathering was based on the facts that water carries soot and grime down, and that the moving train blows dirt and dust up. This time I thought I would try “prototypical weathering.” In other words base my weathering on a specific photo. My candidate was an Atlas RS-1.
This is what I started with:
This is what I wanted to end up with (an RS-1 in Emporium PA, 1968):
And this is what I did end up with:
The first thing I did was to study several photos very closely. The RS-1 at Emporium is a little bit newer than my era, but close enough. I wanted to capture the look of a well-used, but well- cared for loco. Sort of like the family minivan. Definitely dirty, but not beat up. Incidentally I looked at several RS-1 photos. Oddly enough they weather along the same lines. I noticed several things: The underlying paint still has a sheen, but that there is a lot of dirt on the louvers, between the panel gaps, on the pilot, and on the fuel tank and battery box faces. Note the fuel/oil spill. Note also the trucks springs do not stand out as particularly rusty (that one surprised me). And that the windows are rather clean. What really surprised me was the area around the stack was not overly dirty. I saw this in many RS-1 photos By the way, I ignored that brighter region on the leading edge of the trailing truck..I think that is a film defect. I did not see it in any other RS-1 photo I looked at
I followed the techniques of Lee Turner, who is a real expert. He gives a very nice tutorial here:
http://forums.railfan.net/foru...num=1164646326;start=
He uses three techniques:
1) Spraying on an acrylic based weathering layer (which can be quite thick) and then wiping it off with household cleaner. Sometime he cuts out cardboard masks to make specific patterns
2) Drybrushing
3) Thin washes
He augments these with several others, depending on the effect he is after. I highly recommend reading his post
I pretty much followed his suggestions, except I used Polly Scale paints instead of Tamiya, simply because I am familiar with them. Here is what I ended up with (by the way I moved the truck sides inward and switched to a kadee coupler):
(Yes, I know the horn droops. It has since been fixed, but I am too lazy to take another photo)
The most amazing thing (to me) was that none of this was that hard. Full credit goes to Lee who came up with the techniques. And I am glad he posted that information
