A Display Model

While I've painted numerous models for myself, one of which even did well in a competition, and built a model as a commission, until recently one thing I hadn't done was produce a display model. As I won't be going to ExpoNG this year and I didn't fancy risking any of my completed Hudson-Hunslet models in the post, I decided it would be good to have a display model that people could see on the Narrow Planet stand to entice them into buying a kit.

As a display model it doesn't need to work so it doesn't contain a motor or layshaft etc. This is partly as I built it around a misprinted brass chassis that won't hold the layshaft, as well as some gears on the axles that I damaged during building of the first prototype model. Of course none of that matters when it's simply being viewed on the display stand. So if you haven't had the chance to see one of these Hudson-Hunslet models in the flesh yet, have a day out at ExpoNG and hunt out the Narrow Planet stand for a good look.

As well as being fun to build I also experimented with a new painting technique but that can wait for another post.

Girders

Progress is moving along nicely now with my entry to the Dave Brewer challenge and today I can report that the girders have been detailed and both them and the rails nicely rusted. For a change I thought I'd show a different view of the diorama looking downstream from above the bridge.

From this angle you can't see the concrete support block although I promise it is there, and I think the scene is really coming together nicely now. The next two jobs will be to add the sleepers to the rail and to paint the rocks. I'm guessing I'll do these in parallel so I don't go crazy hand spiking the rail.

Just Rust: Take 2

On reflection, and given the very helpful and constructive criticism from Paul and Iain, I've gone back and had a second go at rusting a bit of rail and girder. While the powder based approach might work well for rail dumped in a bog for a few years I admit that it wasn't so good at representing rusting surfaces which tend to discolour without such serious pitting.

On this second attempt I again started with red oxide primer and then started to add shading using the same paints as before. At this stage I wasn't entirely convinced that I was getting anywhere but the addition of some weathering powders (rust and dark earth) seems to have pulled things together nicely. Not only does the texture look more convincing but I think the colour is better as well. Hopefully you all agree?

This episode reinforces the main reason I enjoy blogging and getting comments; without Paul and Iain's feedback I may well have just continued with my first approach and the final model would have suffered as a result.

Yorkshire Stone

While I now have a track plan for 77 Box Lane I still haven't done any track laying or building construction, mostly as I keep getting distracted by the Welsh slate industry! I did get as far as doing some cobble experiments and I even used some scalescenes.com brick papers to build a small photographic diorama. While the wall looked pretty good on the diorama I came to the decision, when trying to use the same paper for a low wall, that the stones were a bit large and that the lack of relief might be a problem on such a narrow layout, but at the time I didn't have any better ideas, short of using DAS clay and scribing the stones by hand.

About a month or so ago, when browsing in my local model shop, I picked up a piece of Slater's embossed plastikard that looked like it might be a good alternative to the brick paper I'd been using, although at the time I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to paint it to look like Yorkshire stone so it got put to one side.

Fortunately two things then happened which have led me to an approach to painting the embossed sheet to look like Yorkshire stone that I'm fairly happy with. First up Iain went and wrote a blog post about the slate wagons I sent him. This in turn delayed Geoff from writing a blog post about his excellent Llangunllo layout. When he did write the delayed post he happened to mention that he'd used RailMatch concrete to colour the mortar course on the building he was painting. The second thing was that yesterday I painted a weathered example of my narrow gauge flat wagon and I decided that the colour wasn't that far away from dirty, smoke blackened Yorkshire stone.

Combining these two ideas led me to paint the embossed sheet as follows. Firstly I sprayed the sheet with a white primer as I found that the acrylics wouldn't stick to it very well. Once that had dried I painted the entire thing using the RailMatch concrete (#2422) to act as a base coat as well as to colour the mortar. I then dry brushed on khaki (Model Color 70.988) followed by brown sand (Model Color 70.876). This was then all toned down slightly with a thin black wash, before the final details were added by dry brushing with dark sand (Model Color 70.847) and black (Model Color 70.950) to simulate the dirty patches.

It was only when I'd finished painting this small sample that I noticed that, according to the sticker on the back, the sheet is for 7mm scale modelling not 4mm scale, oops. Given that I bought the sheet as the stones looked a similar size to those on the scalescenes.com brick paper this would explain why those stones looked too big. The stones on this sheet are actually slightly smaller than on the scalescenes.com sheet being about 3mm, so 9 inches, tall. The sheet might work for a large factory, but I'll try and pick up a 4mm sheet of the same stone effect and see if that looks a bit better sized for walls and small workshops, but at least this is progress... of a sort.

RNAD Crew Van: Reasonably Well Maintained

So the last stage of building the RNAD Crew Van is to paint the body. Given the rather distressed state of the loco most likely to be seen pulling it on my layout I knew I couldn't do a pristine paint job, but I also didn't want to go for a very run down look so I've attempted a kind of in between, reasonably well maintained look.

The weathering is a little more obvious in real life but essentially I've used small amounts of rust wash to help pick out the door recess, the joint with the roof, the bottoms of the window frames and along the bottom edge of the wall where it meets the underframe. I then toned down the roof with some smoke weathering powder, before using dark earth weathering powder to add some grime part way up the walls all of which was then fixed in place with a waft of satin varnish.

The final stage was to glaze the windows. This actually turned out to be much harder than I expected, as four of the windows were too large for my usual approach of using Micro Kristal Klear. Instead I had to cut some clear plastic (an off-cut from laminating something smaller than A4) to fit the window opening. I wanted the glazing to be flush to the frames rather than just placed inside the walls which meant they had to be an exact fit which took an awful lot of time, so much time that I resorted to using the Micro Kristal Klear on the smaller windows.

Other than couplings and a crew the van is finished, and yet again it was a wonderful kit to build, thanks Narrow Planet!

Painting Wood

While I was really happy with how the wood colouring of the 3D printed flat wagons turned out it should be obvious that the colour is really only suited to newly planed wood and that in use on a railway unpainted wood wouldn't stay this colour for long. The advantage of having 3D printed the wagons is I can easily print some more and paint them in different states of repair. I currently have some more on order but before they arrive I thought I'd do some experiments to work out how I'm going to represent wood in different states of ageing.

When I ordered the first set of wagons in the finely detailed material I also ordered a set in the cheaper material I've used before for printing OO gauge wagons. While these didn't turn out well enough to be useful as models, I thought they could form the basis of a useful set of painting experiments. It is worth remembering though that as they are made from a different, much rougher and more absorbent, material that the final wagons will look slightly different.

I had two approaches I wanted to try. Firstly there was Iain's suggestion for producing a silvery grey wood colour and then a dry brushing based method that I'd read on a forum that I thought worth trying.

I started with a variation on Iain's suggestion; the variation being that I didn't have any Humbrol #27 in my paint box so I substituted Model Color's London Grey (#70.836) which I believe is a 50/50 mix of black and white. So I started with a layer of London Grey, then a thin wash of black (Model Color 73.201) before dry brushing on some Tamiya Gun Metal. I also dry brushed on a small amount of khaki (Model Color 70.988). You can see the result on the left hand model. This seems to work quite well, and I would never have though about using a metalic paint to add the aged effect. I might need to experiment with both the base grey and the amount of black wash, especially as in reality it looks a little darker than the photo, but it looks pretty good.

The second approach is similar in that there is a base colour, a wash and some dry brushing but there are quite a few more paints (all Model Color) involved. I started by painting on a layer of black (70.950) and then once that was dry a layer of khaki keeping the layer thin enough to allow the black to give slight variations in the finish. I then used the black wash (73.201) to detail the gaps between the planks etc. and to tone down the khaki. A round of dry brushing then followed using khaki followed by brown sand (70.876) and finally dark sand (70.847) which confusingly is a lighter colour than brown sand. I then retouched in the details by adding a very thin watered down layer of the black wash. The final touch was then a very light dry brushing of dark sand to lighten the raised areas ever so slightly. Obviously the effect and colour is very different to the first approach, but then it represents a different stage of the wood ageing. In fact this approach seems to match quite well with my next door neighbours unpainted fence which I think is around 10 years old.

Of course I'm not sure how well these approaches will work on the other material, but hopefully another bunch of models should arrive from the printers next week some time so I shouldn't have too long to wait to find out.

Natural Wood

As I mention in my previous post, when it comes to painting I much prefer those models where I can simply block paint in single colours. I can add a little detail with dry brushing, but I'm not particularly good at mixing paints to achieve a natural look; one of my main problems is choosing the right paints to start with. Given that most of the wagon is bare wood I knew I would need something slightly more convincing than the wooden floor I achieved on the workman's coach, so I went on a hunt for some wood coloured paints.

My local model shop stocks Humbrol, Tamiya, and Model Color paints, but out of all three ranges they only had one Model Color paint that contained the word wood; Natural Wood 70.834. Obviously I bought this one, although I also picked up some dark sand, brown sand, and khaki as a tutorial I'd read recently suggested these colours could be used to represent wood. Looking at all four bottles I wasn't convinced any of them were really wood coloured.

My first impression of all the paints wasn't encouraging, but I did notice that the natural wood appeared to be fairly transparent, and in fact a quick web search shows a number of shops where it is labelled as transparent even though the label on the bottle makes no mention of this. Given it's transparent nature I wasn't particularly convinced by it, especially as it would require quite a lot to cover a surface. A bit of experimentation though showed that I could get some interesting effects depending upon what paint I applied under it. After playing around for a while I came up with the following really simple approach to painting the wood and while it probably isn't particularly novel I think it is worth documenting, at least so I can remember how I achieved the effect when I want to repeat it in the future.

So the approach requires just three paints; a white primer, the Model Color Natural Wood (70.834) and Model Color Black Shade Wash (73.201). I started by priming the wagon using a aerosol can of cheap white auto primer to act as the base colour. Once this was dry I used the black wash to help pick out the detail (gaps between the boards etc.) and to provide some shading variation. Once that had dried I then brushed on the transparent natural wood. For both the black wash and the natural wood I brushed the paint across the model following the planks so that details didn't cross planks too much. As you can see, in the top right photo, this is already starting to look fairly good, but I repeated the process a second time (black wash first and then the natural wood again) to build up more layers and details. Given that both paints brush on well and dry as very thin layers you can add a number of layers before you run any risk of obscuring the molded details, but I found just the four layers (two of black two of natural wood) gave me a colour and pattern I was happy with. I then painted in the rest of the details and finished the model with a quick waft of matt varnish, which helps to tone down the final natural wood layer slightly.

I'm sure there are many other ways of achieving a similar effect (I know Paul has used Lifecolor's Weathered Wood acrylic set to good effect) but for shear simplicity I quite like this approach and I think I'll be using it again in the future.

Distressing

So having assembled the Baguley-Drewry locomotive the next step was to paint it. My plan was to give it a well looked after finish, unfortunately that didn't happen.

The first step was to give it a coat of primer (Humbrol prime grey from an aerosol) which went on easily and didn't show up any areas that needed attention before the next layer of paint. According to the prototype information the loco would have originally been painted "hazard" yellow, with black side skirts and buffer blocks, so for want of any better ideas I'd picked up an aerosol can of Humbrol yellow gloss (I tend to prefer matt but gloss was all I could get). I masked off the side skirts and bufers and sprayed the model and left it to dry. This seemed to work well, and I had a wonderful smooth finish, so I then masked off the upper body so I could spray on the black paint (Humbrol again, this time black satin). Again this seemed to all go well, until I went to remove the masking tape.

When I removed the masking tape, not only did I find that in some places the black paint had run under the tape, but removing the tape had caused the yellow paint to bubble and lift. To say I was distressed was an understatement. My lovely smooth paint job was ruined. In fact I was so distressed that I couldn't bring myself to photograph the disaster before me. My initial plan to rescue the situation was to try and sand back the damaged areas and repaint, but I quickly decided that wasn't going to work well. I could have tried to strip the paint, but I didn't want to risk the metal parts coming loose. So in the end I decided to switch and finish the model in a run down and distressed state.

I used a combination of a small file, T-cut and a a blunted cocktail stick to remove the black paint that had leaked onto the upper body, as well as the badly bubbled yellow paint, and some areas that were actually okay but where I thought rust was likely to form. I then painted these areas using RailMatch dark rust. Once this had dried I then gently painted some water on to the rusted areas before sprinkling on some fine table salt. Once the water had dried the salt was well attached to the model. At this point I again masked off the black side skirts and buffers, before respraying the rest of the body yellow. This was then allowed to sit and dry thoroughly.

Once the yellow was dry I used a cocktail stick (the pointy end this time) to remove the salt grains which allowed the rust colour to show through, although in some places this also removed some of the the rust colour as well. Once all the salt was removed I dabbed small amounts of a rust weathering wash from Flory Models, onto the rusted areas, wiping most of it off with my finger in a downwards direction to simulate water having run across the surface -- I also brushed some of this wash across the black areas as well. The next step was then to use some of the Humbrol rust weathering powder (which was the free gift when I subscribed to one of the model railway magazines) to tone down the rest of the yellow paint so it didn't look like some areas where pristine while others were badly rusted. Final details, such as the window frames and door handles etc. were then picked out, and the makers name badge attached (with a drop of varnish rather than glue as it gives more time to position it accurately), before a light layer of satin varnish was applied to seal the paint to the model. Once the varnish was dry, the windows were glazed (in the same way as I glazed the windows of the lorry on Jerusalem), and then finally the windscreen wipers were fitted. It took me about 45 minutes to fit these, mostly as it took me about 30 minutes to find the one I dropped on the floor!

While this wasn't at all the way I had set out to paint the model, I am really happy with how it has turned out.

There are two things missing before it can be considered fully complete; couplings and a driver. The roof is only a push fit so once I find a driver model I can easily add one, and I'm not going to add couplings until I've decided on the track layout. The reason for this is that if I decided that the track plan is such that the loco will never run around a set of wagons, then I'll only need couplings at one end, at which point I wouldn't bother to fit both couplings, especially as I doubt they will improve the look of the model.

So while the process was distressing (in both senses of the word) I now have a model I'm really quite proud of.

It's A Dirty Old World

So far all the models I've painted have been left in pristine condition but in reality railways aren't really clean places. It won't take more than a few miles for mud and dirt to be deposited onto a newly painted surface. I haven't yet been able to bring myself to try and weather one of the wagons I've finished with transfers, but I thought I'd have a go at muddying up the LNWR 1 plank wagon given that it won't be a particularly useful model as I messed up one of the axle holes.

I didn't really have the right shade of grey to hand to paint the model, so I just used the wolf grey primer I did have to do the initial painting. As you can see from the photo on the left it is rather blue in colour and way too bright and clean to represent an "in use" model. Fortunately I'd also recently picked up a can of spray on mud!

There are a number of weathering products available including paints and weathering powders, but I decided to start my weather experiments using a spray can of Modelmates Mud Brown. I applied three thin coats before I was happy that the blue colour had been adequately toned down. While it isn't perfect I'm quite happy with this really simple approach to weathering, and I feel that the final model is much better for it.