Track weathering

 Actually this is not really worth a post.. but it's my first activity in months: sleepers painting and weathering in Elmslohe station. I coatted the sleepers of the H0 Tillig Elite rails in a mixture of Humbrol 33 black and 98 chocolate brown to get rid of the shiny appearance. After a night drying time, I drybrushed white over the sleepers giving them a weathered finish.

Narrow gauge ballasting

 I continued with working on the tracks of the narrow gauge micro layout. With the sleepers and rails painted, ballasting was the next job on the list. I opted for a light coloured mix of different Woodland Scenics ballast, namely 873 Fine Buff (biggest content), 874 Fine Light Grey and 875 Fine Grey. For the first time I used Woodland Scenics "Scenic Cement" to glue the ballast down. I must say it worked really well. It is of course more expensive than the traditional method using wood glue, water and a drop of washing up liquid, but it is very efficient.

I left some ballast on the sleepers in some spots that I normally would have carefully brushed away. This to reflect a  little less maintained track bed. Finally, I greened the roadbed up with materials from various suppliers. Once everything was dry I removed any ballast on spots where it should not sit. In this process often the rust paint also comes off, leaving annoying, shiny silvery spots. I touched up these spots with Humbrol 113. On a next layout I might do the painting of the rails with Humbrol 113 only after everything is ballasted. With the current method I seem to have to do the painting twice.. I am curious if that would be a more time saving approach.

I will still go over everything with another round of weathering, but so far I am really pleased with the effect.

"Catching-up" on the newly ballasted narrow gauge line.

The ballast is mixed. Let's start the fun..

First stage completed. Now the detail work starts with removing ballast in the wrong spots, filling up "holes", adding plants, re-painting spots, ...

Letting it dry. The shiny appearance will disappear once the Scenic Cement is dry.

Some more images of the finished job:

Feldbahn track works

Track works continued on the narrow gauge Feldbahn micro-layout following a 3-step process:

1) Painting the sleepers in a mixture of Humbrol 98 Chocolate Brown and 33 Black to get rid of the shiny, plastic appearance;

2) Dry-brushing Humbrol  34 White over the sleepers to create more depth and a weathered appearance;

3) Painting the rails in Humbrol 113 rust brown.

Next stop: ballasting.

The Peco tracks after step 1.

After step 2 with the tracks dry-brushed

Drybrushed Peco tracks.

The first test run after step 3, the painting of the rails with Humbrol 113.

Industrial narrow gauge diesel update

The industrial 760mm narrow gauge Diesel, my old H0e model from a Roco starter kit, is nearing completion. After the fitting of the new motor and decoder the locomotive entered the paint and weathering shop. The undercarriage and buffer beams were painted in mat red (Humbrol 60). The interior of the cab in light grey (Revell 371). Door handles and similar in aluminium (Tamiya XF-16). Finally the model got a good weathering in washes of different thickness of mat black (Humbrol 33). I then dry brushed some metal (Vallejo 70.873 gun metal) and dirt-brown (Vallejo 70.941 burnt umber) on different places. Finally I placed an engine driver from Faller. Now I am looking for some final details like factory plates.

This is a hard-working small engine, so I weathered her heavily. Inspiration came from the previously mentioned factory line of the "Papierfabrik Steyrermühl" in Austria. Prototype images can be found on Drehscheibe Online.

Lokführer Peter Panner proudly presents his „Tinker Bell”, a nickname he has given this honest, hard-working little engine because of her green paint scheme and the special character she sometimes shows when working the Feldbahn. We cannot find back in the archives if this was linked to Peter Panner’s viewing of “Peter Pans heitere Abenteuer”, the original Disney movie which was released in Germany in December 1953.

Interior of the small Diesel with the new motor and decoder fitted.

My weathering inspiration.

Weathering NS 2437

I did a first layer of weathering on my Roco NS 2437. I applied a light wash of Humbrol enamel mat black and Humbrol enamel thinner to remove the shiny plastic look and blacken/highlight the gratings and doors. Excess paint was removed with a cloth. I also treated the bogies with the same black wash to remove the shine. However, more weathering still needs to be done to add a brownish, rusty color typical for bogies.

I prefer a visible, but quite "light" weathering on my engines. I also want to take some pictures on the layout with the proper lighting before continuing. This will give me a better view on how much more is needed to achieve the look I finally want to achieve.

The workspace ready for weathering.

 

The body of NS 2437 as it came out of the box, i.e. before weathering.

This image and below with the black wash as first layer of weathering.

Current state of NS 2437 on the layout.