HO Scale - What's On Your Workbench?

Thanks. Some of the northern Arizona tracks have a mixture of ballast. The black may be cinders since northern AZ is volcanic, the light may be crushed granite? the ratio should be different. The black should only be on the outside edges while the center and to the end of the ties lighter colored. I put down too much black so I was limited on how much gray I could use. It was my first time ballasting track.

 

I just finished these in preparation for a train show. Tthese have a combination of powders, dry brush, air brush, wash
and what I call dunk-n-gunk. Dunk-n-gunk is an adaptation of Big Al's method of brushing on a very heavy/dirty wash to make it run down the roofs and sides of the cars. It's very effective. I modified the method by mixing my wash up in a plastic drywall tray and dunking the well cars. It was quite effective on making them dirty.

i used a combination of decals and hand painted graffiti on the cars. Decals were some purchased off ebay. The hand painted used paint pens and gel pens. I believe the gel pens give a more realistic look like a spray paint mark.
The last picture shows use of the gel pens.

Thanks for looking!
Dale

 

Nice realism Dale.

 

Thank you all for the kind words guys. I have 3 more sets of 5 to do. I will put together a "How-to" for the forum.
The Walthers TTX cars have a matte finish and seem to take the gunk quite well as is. I dipped them about 4 times and let them air dry in between. I sealed them in with matte spray at the end. I then added the graffitti.

i did strip the cars of the running gear before dipping. I weather the trucks and wheels by hand, those will include in the "How-to" as well. I use a heavy wash and dry brush on the side frames and a rail pen and powder on the wheels. The purpose was to get these done in bulk for the show.

The stand alone SF car had a glossy finish. I dunked it a couple of times and it didn't seem to take the gunk well. It did better after I hit it with matte spray.

I have a set of TTX well cars in the tan paint and a SF set in the more glossy red paint, I will do both sets.

the dipping paint is Walmart acrylic black, pavement, burnt umber and a dark green. I didn't measure it, I just made it look grimy and stirred it in tap water. I used a plastic drywall mud tray I had laying around to dip in.

Ill get started on it and post it soon.

Again, thank you all for the kind words. Looking at your projects and how well they turn out, I am proud of your comments!

Interesting, I saw some well cars down at the port tonight, they were 40' cars and had large crates of some kind in them. I plan to model some to bring in on the layout. I have a very old set of Rail Power Products well cars that came out before the Walthers sets did. I think those are 40 foot cars. I will do those as well.

i definitely think the gel pens are the way to go for hand done graffiti, they seem to capture the spray paint look quite well. The paint pens are too big and they dry out pretty quickly...... I'll still use the decals also, those look pretty good, I'm not good enough an artist to do some of the work we seen IRL.

Thanks,
Dale

 

I don't know how many D&RGW steam engines had the sunburst - they used a few different high visibility paint schemes on the front of some of their steam engines including a semi chevron design. I read that the sunburst was removed because it resembled the Japanese flag (also having a sunburst on it) and there was a major anti Japanese sentiment in the US after WWII, understandably.

 

The whole scene looks fantastic Jim, great work!

 

Love the ingenious foundation there Jim. Great work.