I have taken a couple of the wagons that have been mentioned in previous blogs and subjected them to a bit of weathering. This time though, I have changed my approach and tried out a selection of the newish Humbrol washes to see what sort of results I can achieve.
Below are a couple of photos showing before (left) and after (right) to show what I have achieved. Now before I carry on with the remaining wagons I thought it would be wise to post this and canvass everyones opinion first. Apologies for the not-so good quality photos but hopefully you can get a good enough idea on what they look like.
Julia :o)
Julia,
ReplyDeleteThe china clay wagon looks good, though possibly a bit dark given the load it would have been carrying?
The fruit van's maybe a little uniform in colour (and again maybe a bit dark), though that could be the photo and/or the lighting and/or my eyesight!
Regards,
David
Thanks for the honest reply David.
DeleteI will be honest and say I agree with you. I am not convinced about the fruit D wagon hence the reason for this post. Th only thing now is I wonder if I can remove some of the wash even after it has had a coat of dullcote over the top.
As for the china clay wagon I understand totally what you mean. I have been thinking on an excuse for running these on the layout and the conclusion I came to was that they have been re-purposed and are not being used for china clay anymore and therefore the reason why there isn't much in the way of weathering to suit. That sounds plausible doesn't it?
J.
Julia,
DeleteIf you can't remove the wash (or the dullcote) can you apply something over the top?
I've started using PanPastels and have found them very useful for lightening colours when I've made things too dark.
Re-purposed china clay wagons sounds plausible, presumably now just general purpose? Can't help but wonder if some slightly lighter patches might help - maybe used for carrying stone or part time ballast wagons?
David
I have to say I've struggled to get good results with these washes, even by my poor standards. They are too much Humbrol and not enough wash.
ReplyDeleteHi James, thanks for the reply.
DeleteThey are very much still a big experiment for me. I cannot see any reason why the same effect cannot be done using normal paint to be honest but using a pre-mixed colour just makes it a bit easy. I haven't given up on them (yet!), I think it will get better with practice. Still not convinced about the black wash though, that seems far more 'liquid' than the others plus it gives a gloss finish too, even after shaking the pot for a long time before use.
J.
Hiya Julia me being me I quite like them
ReplyDeleteThank you John.
DeleteDid you scratch off some of the vivid white GW first? Doing that would have meant less overpainting perhaps. I've not yet done any serious weathering but I would have thought if the base colour is Humbrol (or whichever) could the weathering be a build up of thin water colour, acrylic or powder. They surely won't get too much handling to require a protective coat.
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried them yet but I bought from China a palette of some cosmetic eye shade mixes for 99p (inc post) - blues/greys/whites/rusty These could be dry-brush applied I suppose. I remember Dave Smith saying how he grates pastel chalks on his models. .
Hello Mystic Anonymous person.
DeleteYes, I did scratch off quite a bit of the original GW before the weathering, I didn't want to take too much off though so to show some remains of the original wagon.
As you say, I find weathering powders very effective on smaller models so I have a nice collection of colours I can use. As I previously mentioned, this was a bit of an experiment using washes instead.
J.
Hello Julia,
ReplyDeleteI like the china clay wagon but I think that the D is a bit too dark. You could try very light drybrushing with the original colour just to get a bit of contrast back and leave the wash down in the grooves.
Alex.
Thanks for the opinion Alex.
DeleteI agree with you regarding both of them. Since the post I have managed to take a fair bit of the weathering off the fruit d wagon and I personally think it does look better. The only problem now is that it has gained a satin finish again!
J.
I think there are two aspects to weathering - first is the dulling down of the paint with time and, second, is the build up of dust, dirt and general 'gunk'.
ReplyDeleteThe first of these is fairly uniform and I think you have captured this aspect, whereas the second is much more selective and depends on the nature of the load (white for china clay), rusting of metal bits, oil from axle boxes, etc., etc. This is best achieved by studying as many prototype photos as possible. From your photos, everything looks rather uniform, so far, but the nice thing is that you can always keep adding this build-up of grunge :)
Thank you Mike, you are very right. This I guess is where Google is your friend. Of course the tricky bit is translating the images into a 3D scale model.
DeleteJ.
Julia, while this has nothing to do with the china clay wagons (which I think are superb), I'd like to take a moment and bring up something from back in time...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=298769
Probably a year and a half ago I had seen your post on RMWeb talking about your laser-cut narrow gauge wagon body and your own etched chassis. For many months I have been looking for that post but I had forgotten who it had been written by and where it had been posted.
Your recent response to my layout thread on NGRM-Online jogged my memory and I went on the hunt to find that post.
If you don't mind, I have a few questions for you about your chassis.
1) What wheelsets are you using in it?
2) How said wheelsets are mounted in the chassis?
3) In your opinion, how have your chassis preformed thus far?
For Killashandra I am using some Peco N6.5 wagon kits I purchased second-hand, but they don't roll at all. The stock plastic sideframes are absolutely terrible. The three that I have assembled, using the recommended Märklin wheelsets, do nothing more than forcibly slide around.
It had even been recommended to me to use Parkside Dundas tophat bearings, but those proved useless as they made the Peco sideframes spread out like a bird's wings, and that was even after drilling out the Peco sideframes to the correct width for the bearings.
I've just about reached the point where I'm seriously considering giving up on the idea of having any working rolling stock on Killashandra.
I'd very much appreciate any help you might be able to offer.
Many thanks!
-Cody Fisher
Hello Cody and welcome to my little blog space.
DeleteYes, I produced an etch for a chassis that was a direct replacement for the PECO Narrow Gauge wagons but it only got as far as a addition to a test etch a while back. It never got any further than that really but there is no reason why more cannot be made, sadly I dont have anymore at the moment.
To answer your questions:
1. I designed it to fit the 'full throttle Wills wheels' from the US code WDW #600 (Z Scale 33" wheels) which should be readily available in the US (but I don't think they are in the UK anymore) http://www.wdwfullthrottle.com/detail_600.htm
2. They fit into the chassis using top hat bearings I got from the 2mmSA
3. I am happy with the chassis, it wasn't intended to be anything other than a generic chassis but it fits the PECO bodies well and it very free running )if those wheels are used). Its not overly complicated to put together either.
I am also working on some chassis using the same idea based upon an Irish prototype for Brian D, I am sure he can elaborate as to what prototypes they are if you would like to know more about them.
Don't give up on the layout because of something like the rolling stock, there is always a solution. Especially as you have made such an excellent job of it so far.
I hope that helps?
Julia :o)
Many thanks for the response!
DeleteThe information certainly does help.
The full throttle wheels are indeed readily available here in the US, so that's a good start.
Another question:
How do the 2mm Association tophat bearings compare to those offers by Parkside Dundas?
I've found that the ones PD offers tend to be packaged without any eye towards quality control, as more than half of the bearings I received in a package were improperly parted during the machining process and therefore were not useable. But of course, I'm not a member of the Association, so I've to work with what I can get. (That strange substance called "money" is quite elusive to me, being a student and whatnot, but I try to spend it in the right places when I have it.)
If I ask nicely, could I trouble you for a copy of the file of the drawing of the chassis?
And your mention of a more prototypical Irish chassis is very intriguing as I've been debating selling one of my kidneys to be able to commission someone to create either a basic etched kit or a Shapeways model of Irish narrow-gauge cattle wagons.
I shall be interested to hear more about it as things develop!
Many Thanks!
-Cody F.
Hello Cody.
DeleteIm sorry but I have no knowledge of the Parkside Dundas bearings so I am not in the position to comment about them other than I am a little surprised that they would be unusable because they were not machined correctly? Im also a little surprised you aren't a member of the 2mmSA too considering what you are making.
As for sending you the file, I will send off a PDF of the etch artwork to you later.
J.
The PD bearings weren't parted correctly, so more than half of the bearings I received had little brass nubs inside them. I tried cutting and drilling them out, but it just made things worse.
DeleteI've also never actually considered joining the association, mainly because of money. I tend to have a mindset where I'd rather spend my occasional sums of money on physical things that will directly contribute to modeling progress, as opposed to buying reference books or memberships. I just never saw any real benefit to my joining other than for curiosity sake.
But nonetheless, I did fill out an online application today and I paid my dues, so now I just await confirmation of my membership.
And many many thanks in advance for the etch artwork! I owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
-Cody F.
Hi Julia,
ReplyDeleteIt was good to see you yesterday. Personally, I liked the two Fruit 'D's in real life. Yes they are very grubby, but real parcels vans tended to get very grubby. Definitely much better than the factory finish. I probably would not have applied so much dirt, but in the case of parcels vehicles mine are probably too clean.
For the clay wagons, I don't know. I generally try to find a photo or two to work from so if your china clays are supposed to be in engineers' traffic... look at photos of other wooden bodied vehicles in engineers' traffic.
I've also had numerous projects that have turned out looking glossy when I want the exact opposite. It's very annoying and it still happens to me from time to time so I don't have any magic answers other than adding more paint either by dry brushing or dullcote.
BTW, too late now, but I'm a big fan of attacking my weathering projects with a thinners dampened brush once the grot coloured paint has had maybe 30 minutes or an hour to not quite harden.
Regards, Andy
Thank you for your thoughts Andy.
DeleteIt was nice to meet and catch up with things on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the Wycombe show and one of the reasons was being sat next to you guys.
Its good to have another opinion on the wagons, there is a thread on RMWeb which has some nice pictures of parcels trains which has been a great help too http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/66383-modelling-a-traditional-parcels-train/. As for the china clay wagons I understand what you are saying, it is a bit harder to find a suitable prototype as I am technically bending the truth a bit with them. I think there is a lesson there to try and stick to things that are relevant to the period and area of the chosen prototype. Hopefully I will find something though.
That process you describe about applying a wash and wiping it off with a brush or similar is pretty much what I have used to weather these wagons. I also find some weathering powders help too which help blend it all together.
Julia.
P.S. I would love to speak to you in more depth about LED lighting sometime. I have ordered some LED strip to experiment with something similar to what we spoke about at the show :o)