As we are in the middle of winter here in Australia I decided to do some more weathering. Yesterday I weathered the last of the MKT hoppers using acrylic paint and the airbrush (See weekend Foto Fun for images) Weekend Foto Fun July 8, 2005 Once all the rollingstock was weathered the clean locomotives didnt look realistic so I decided they need to be weathered as well. As these are fairly rare locomotives I didnt want to permanently weather these with paints so I decided to use chalks. I have weathered rollingstock and locomotives before with chalks and have always found this to be effective. The first photograph shows the first unit weather alongside an unweathered unit. You can see the difference from the unit on the left. I used grey, rust and black chalks to give the effects. The second photo shows two of the units now weathered. You can see I placed the rust coloured chalk down the side of the loco to replicate rust. By using white or grey chalk on the body and top of the locomotive it represents fading paint. I then decided to weather the caboose using mainly rust coloured chalk on the roof and grey chalk on the body. Next to the caboose is a weathered hopped which i weathered yesterday using acrylic paints. Here are shots of the locos and cars on the layout, what do you think I'd be interested in some feedback please?
I'm no expert on weathering but I think they look great. Much better on the layout than the work bench, I know it's a lighting thing. I've tried a few things with mixed results and seeing your hoppers has convinced me that I NEED an airbrush. The chalk really intimidates me. Even though step by step tutorials are nice, I still would like some kind of hands on clinic to get pointers on the finer techniques.
The beauty about chalk is you can experiment and if you dont like it you can wash it off using an airbrush is unforgiving if you make a mistake.
colonel still a bit clean for the mkt very good weathering, i use chalk all the time, it is very forgiving...
Colonel - they look great! Once you weather a few locomotives, the unweathered ones start to look like toys, eh? Great job.
Thanks guys, Dave you are correct once you start operating weathered trains on the layout the others tend to look unrealistic. I tend to run new rollingstock unweathered at first then slowly weather. Still havent weathered a great deal of my custom painted stuff but I will start to use chalks on them in the near future.
