painting (rusty) rails

I think it is a personal choice. I use brown primer for the rails and primer gray for the ties. I buy spray cans at Lowes or Home depot . If you use something like scale trax one can easily remove the rails and center rail from the ties before laying the track and spray each component separately. Or lay the track, but before ballasting use card stock to mask the components and paint. I usually spray the brown  for the rails first since the ties are normally brown anyway and then mask and spray the gray. One uses a light spray on the ties and coverage doesn't have to be great. Then come back with a black paint wash to weather and if you wish, apply rust with powders or washes. Then ballast.

Just experiment some , I'm sure you will do great.

Ron,

I will say you nailed the track coloring perfectly. Very nice job.

I agree, Ron's color choice and coloring method are really convincing...nice paintjob!

But I am worried about painting ties like FasTrack.and RealTrax.

Ron's looks real. Very good work Ron.

I only wanted to make fastrack look a little more realistic. I used a alcohol ink wash a couple of times to darken the fastrack. I then used two colors of the regular old paint pens to color the outside rails.

It's just methods I have seen on here by other members and liked.

Last I mixed colors of roof granules and woodland scenic ballast until I was happy with the color to kinda sorta match the fastrack. Still have about 60 or more feet to finish it..

Larry

Thanks, Larry, for sharing your experience with weathering markers to paint the tracks.

As you can see in the following video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs88e7djwVE

...my problem is that at various events, such as exhibition halls and RR museum sheds, the poor indoor lighting disturbs my modular layout scenery while photo shooting and video recording. For this reason I use a more lighter faded rusty blend to imitate a remote abandoned branchline yard. In this way I emphasize on the outer rails compared to the blackened center phantom rail.

Larry, your FasTrack looks great, I plan to use the pens also when I get my new track laid down.  Where did you get your marker pens at?  Another great shot of your sculptured formations, is that foam board or ceiling tile?  I wish I could get more info on how you did those beautiful formations.  Thanks for posting.

Steve, Lady and Tex

I generally don't paint them.  When I had Fastrack (I now have Atlas) I did paint the plastic ballast of it with a wash of thinner and black and brown paint to dirty it up a bit, but that has been in.  Never painted the rails.

Beta

I apologize I'm not trying to steal you're post , just answer Tex quickly.

Tex

The pens are from the e-net and Hobbytown USA. They last a long way doing the track

I could show you how I attempted to copy PatricH mountains in 20 min or less but not good on how to explain here. If you go to his old layout post page 2 he starts explaining to a lot of interested members for several pages. The pictures are now gone but the post is still active.

Here is a picture of the tools I used and how it looked before it went outside for paint , landscaping ect. It looks like it is one piece but it's a lot of  individual pieces you are looking at.

Larry

I use Earth Brown. Or Flat Brown by Rust-Oleum. I spray then use liquor thinner to clean the top of the rails after it sets up a bit. (5 mins. or so). No masking involved. You can do a lot of track in a hurry. The color doesn't mess up the ties.

In one of the videos produced by Rich Battista about his Black Diamond Railroad

http://www.toytrainsontracks.com/DVDsPage.html

he explains in detail how to spray horizontally sideways the rails and how to spray vertically from above the ties and how to clean finally the top of the rails.

No need to apologize, Larry, this forum is to share our modeling experiences with each other to enrich and to strengthen our community. 

There are many ways for coloring tracks and for landscaping the layout.

BTW, for the processing/shaping/sculpting of the foam layers I use also an old heated soldering iron by melting the foam material.

Larry - I don't want to interfere with the thread ether, shoot me an email in my profile.

Lot's of different ideas on painting rails just goes to show you how much information is available through forum members.  Helping others in the hobby is a great thing.

Steve, Lady and Tex

Application of Polyscale Railroad Tie Brown, with an air brush, followed by extensive clean-up of the contact surface of the rails. Overspray of Railroad Tie Brown, works well with the wood Gargraves and Ross components pictured. IMO. Mike

Before paint, installation of a Ross 204 3 way switch.