Weathered a Trainorama 49 the other day.

First I dulcote the model. I used Tamiya Clear Matt Coat.

Then I prepare the stuff I’m going to use. I mix AIM products weathering powders with Isopropyl alcohol. I use the Isocol brand of alcohol.

A shot of the mixture inside the spray bottle

The first thing I do is spray the bogies with a grey powder as a sort of undercoat for other colours.

Grey bogies on 4908

My next step is to then use an earth colour to add some more colour to the bogies and to the side of the loco. I also noticed that this helps give the paint a faded look. For this mixture I used “Dusty Brown” and “Medium Earth” mixed together with the Isocol.

I weather the roof and side vents next. I used a grimy black and then a grungy black as well for the roof. The vent on the side is weathering using grimy black.

In the end various things conspired against me and this is how 4908 ended up. I’m going to go back and attack the bogies one day to make them look better.

A few months ago I weathered an SDS Models 10,000 gal Tulloch Tank Car to bring it into a mid-late 1970s feel.  I thought I’d blog about the process and also use it as a first post for a blog where I’d like to post more about my modelling to share it with others.

My process at the time was mostly powders and I used a combination of  Humbrol weathering powders and AIM Products weathering powders.

My first step is to always give the item I’m modelling a quick spray of dullcote to give the powders a surface to stick to as they generally won’t stick to a glossy surface.

I then proceeded to brush a light to medium layer of AIM Products “Grimy Black” to give the tank car that initial aged look and to fade the logo and writing.

I then gave the model another quick spray of dullcote to make sure any loose powder had properly stuck to the model. Sometimes I find that the dullcote will wash away some of the powder, especially with light colours, so a quick touch up is often required in some places.

Once that dullcote had time to properly set I gave it another light layer of “Grimmy Black” as I wasn’t quite happy with how it had aged yet. I then grabbed some earth colours from my Humbrol and AIM collection of powders and dusted up the tank car to give it that “dry summer” feel where it would have received a light coat of dirt.

You can see that the AMPOL is quite filthy now and some of the lettering has disappeared completely. The next step was to add oil stains and the rust from under the straps and too the bogies, For the rust I used a combination of Humbrol “Rust” powder and Humbrol “Rust” wash to get the rust into the springs. You will also notice that I’ve also started to uncover the lettering on the end of the tank (This lettering was obviously how they identified the tank car).

To achieve the oil stain I used humbrols gloss coat and humbrols “black” powder. I mixed these up to create a paste and then using a brush pre-dipped in thinners I ran the brush down the side of the tank car.

I was unhappy with how glossy the oil stain looked and realising that it had gone too far down the side of the wagon I grabbed a brush of thinners and decided to remove some of it. I also finished uncovering the AMPOL 4 on the end of the wagon and gave it another quick extremely light layer of grimy black.

This is actually the final version and I’m quite happy with how it turned out.