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Weathering Freight Cars 101, Part 1 by Bret Shook In the first of this two part article Bret shares some basic airbrush weathering techniques. |
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Paints and solvents can give off harmful fumes. Please follow manufactures' warnings when using them. |
So you’ve decided to take the plunge and try weathering? Well don’t be intimidated, it’s not so hard. I will take you through some of my favorite techniques for weathering pre-painted rolling stock. I won’t cover painting undecorated equipment, as that would take an entire article by itself. Also, I won’t cover weathering engines at this time. I will do another article at a later date on weathering engines. Besides, it is best to weather some inexpensive freight cars for your first attempt. Don’t worry too much about messing up - weathering is a very personal thing and there is really no wrong way to weather a car. Look at the real trains and you will see everything from a little dust to totally rusted and beat up equipment. With some practice, you will find the technique and style that suits you. Well, let’s dive right in! |
| The first step is to decide how much you want the car to be weathered and any special effects that you may want to include. The one effect that has to be addressed before doing anything else is repainted data markings. Have you ever noticed how some cars have a small square area including the car weight data that has been repainted while the rest of the car is all dirty and abused? If you want to use this effect, now is the time to do it. Cut a small square or rectangle piece of masking tape that is slightly larger than the weight data and use it to cover up the data now, before doing any thing else. After the car is weathered and the tape is removed, it will look like this area was repainted. |
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Next I use an airbrush with some thinned acrylic paint to dust up the underside and trucks of the car. I prefer an internal mixture airbrush for weathering, as it will atomize the paint much better than an external mixture brush. This atomization gives you a dust effect instead of the droplets you will get with an external mixture airbrush. I use Polly S earth or dirt color thinned out very thin (about 1 part paint, 8 parts water). You can also use grimy black, gray tones, or even roof brown if desired. The best way to decide on a color is to find some prototype pictures and try something close to the pictures. Different roadbed materials cause cars in different areas to have different colors of dust on them. I prefer lighter colors as they cause the details of the trucks and underbody to “pop out” and show up better. If it is easy, I remove the trucks for this part of the process to get better results. Place the car upside down on an old towel or rag and spray the thinned color over the entire bottom and let it go up the sides and ends too. Start off with a light spray pattern on the airbrush – you can always add more, but you can’t take it off very easily! |
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For the trucks, I keep an old piece of track in my spray area so I can roll them as I dust them. I first turn them upside down and mist them from the bottom while rolling them with one gloved finger. Then turn them over and do the same from the top. Give everything a few minutes to dry (it won’t take long with paint this thin!), then carefully replace the trucks. |
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Now set the car upright on the track and add more dusting up the sides and ends as desired. You can stop right now or at any point if you want a lightly weathered car.
I generally don’t stop at this point, even for a light weathering job. I model the steam era and even a lightly weathered car will have some soot on the roof. This area of weathering also takes a little experimentation to find out what you like. My general rule to pick a color for weathering roofs is this: Use a lighter gray color for lighter color cars and use a dark, almost black, gray for darker colored cars. You can gradually adjust your soot color for more or less contrast as desired. More contrast will represent more weathering. |
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| One thing that has to be done when you reach your stopping point, wherever that is – that is to cover the entire car with clear to protect the weathering. Paint thinned out as much as what we have used will scrape right off with any handling if it is not clear-coated.
My favorite clear-coat is a mixture of Testor’s dull coat and gloss coat sprayed through an airbrush. I use about 2 parts dull coat to 1 part gloss coat and then thin this mixture 1 to 1 with Testor’s airbrush thinner. The reason for adding the gloss coat is that dull coat alone will chalk up your clear coat and give it a milky appearance. You can experiment with the mixture to get anything from a flat to a semi-gloss as desired for a certain application. |
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Next I will cover some of my techniques for heavier weathering. (See Part 2 of this Article.) Well, I hope that I have been able to encourage you to take the first step and give it a try! If you have any questions or have decided that you want weathering, but don’t want to do it yourself, feel free to drop me an e-mail and we can discuss it. My e-mail address is Pntntrains@aol.com. And most of all, remember to have fun and enjoy it! |
