Last weekend we took the Southern Star from central NC up to Philadelphia and tomorrow we will be returning. I figured there would never be a better opportunity to really see what buildings and scenery along a RR really look like than this, so I spent a good two hours of the trip just watching out the window, studying the small towns, factories and industrial sites, trainyards, homes farmhouses, and whatever else we passed. I took a lot of notes and much of what I saw confirmed what I expected and how I set up, paint, weather and detail my layout. I was particularly pleased that, apparently, I really do understand how rust looks, starts, and spreads, particularly on older mobile homes (of which there are many near train tracks in NC and Virginia). this is N scale from seven years ago and I saw patterns just like these.
The first thing that surprised me is how much and how often odds bits of ballast end up on ties, up alongside the rail, and how uneven the distribution of them is along the edges of the ballast area. I recently installed all Atlas and ballasted it and worked hard to remove the odd bit that would end up on a tie, etc., and to even out edges, for a nice clean look - clean perhaps but neot real-world at all!
The second thing and the biggest surprise was the weathering of shingle roofs. The picture below is my attempt to illustrate what I saw and the difference with what I had thought was how they weathered.
Sheet metal roofs apparently weather more like I expected. The photo below shows the Woodland Scenics Deuces bike shop that I have bashed/modified/added detail/changed to Lucas Doolin's (Robert Mitchum's character in Thunder Road) moonshiners' garage below, the dark black weathering that is most intense on a panel and starts at the top from the overlap of the panel above, is a pattern I saw often. Those who have Deuces Bike Shop know that it comes with weathering like this. However, I had added something very real to that: some panels rust (a light brown haze at first growing more brown/red, as opposed to the almost black, whatever it is (not mildew?) from the top at the unction with another panel) - and panels do this at a different rate - some do, some don't. I added this to my Doolins, as shown. l, and washed the roof a bit more and did a bit more weathered
we're headed back tomorrow and I plan to study again for a couple of hours, this time concentrating on "junk" by the side of the tracks, etc.
