How did you improve your rolling stock?

[cteno4]

We now have a new worldwide model topic for this subject as well.

 

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Kamome]

On 6/7/2021 at 9:33 PM, Tony Galiani said:

Weathered two containers this weekend.  Trying to come close to what I have seen in videos - light weathering and no shine but not extremely dirty.  Put on a coat of clear flat, than a bit of dry brushing with dark grey on the sides, end and roof.  Tried to get some streaks on the roof consistent with air flow but not sure it worked all that well.  I then used a bit of Tamiya grey panel line accent on a cotton swab on the top of each one.

One thing I realized was that adding a bit of water to the clear flat reduced the appearance of the brush strokes and seemed to give a better end result.  The container on the left was done with that technique and looks better to me.  The container on the right was done first and you can see some white effect from the uneven flat finish.  I might try and add some heavier weathering to the top of the one on the right but not sure if that would be too unrealistic.

Ciao,

Tony Galiani

It’s a nice start Tony.

 

Getting rid of the plasticky look is always a big plus. I would probably add some variety so leave one relatively clean and go a little heavy with some darker brown/black washes in recesses on the other. I see a lot of these Big Eco containers on the back of trucks going past my office. Some look very clean and others have a coating of brown dust all over them. I tend to mix black and dark brown panel line accent and then dilute further with enamel thinners. This gives a cloudy, dirty colour rather than  an obvious brown or black. 
 

On the rails, you sometimes see 2 dark brown lines from the bottom of the container to about halfway where dirt has been kicked up by the wheels of the Koki. This is especially noticeable on the white JOT containers. 

 

 Roof is more difficult, some have lighter brown dirt from the pantograph wear raining down on it, others may have black soot from diesel engines, others sun bleached or not.

 

As the nature of these things is to be moved around the country, you can’t really go too wrong. Also a good thing to try different weathering ideas and techniques. 

[Tony Galiani]

Thanks for those ideas.  I have the different panel line accent colors but it never occurred to me to mix them.  I did dry brush one to get it dirtier which gives it a nice contrast.  Still struggling with the roof of that one but am going to go back and work on it some more.  I also have some of the Tamiya brown weathering powder so will give that a go as well.

I plan to weather several more containers to see if I can that contrast between some clean and some very dirty and will post pictures again when I do.

Ciao,

Tony

[Tony Galiani]

Did a bit more work  - gave a heavier coating of dirt to the EcoLiner container and weathered three Tomix containers trying to get a bit of contrast among them.  Didn't quite work out as I expected but okay for now.  Not sure if the roof of the EcoLiner is a bit overdone.  Since even a short container train of five or six cars will need up to 30 containers I expect I will get more practice.

Ciao,

Tony Galiani

[Kamome]

 

The C57 1 in the foreground hasn’t been done yet but will hopefully illustrate the difference between the plastic coal piece and adding a little scatter to the top.

 

 

Before

 

After

 

I have also been testing painting some black enamel into the centre recess of the driving rods, especially on the goods engines. I started with the smaller engines.  A little diluted enamel running into the recess takes some of the shine away from the driving rods making it look a little more used. Any over spill is easily cleaned up with a q tip.  Also blackened the all metal pick up pony wheels. The paint is kept well away from any of the moving parts.

 

 

Interestingly, I have 5x Kato D51s, none of which have the same tender as another. Even have the OE version of 498 as well as the more current JR East version and they have different coal bunkers and the updated version has a GPS antenna.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Kamome

[Kamome]

Another short project to dirty up one of my DF50s, add some white to the steps and put in a blue train driver.

[cteno4]

Trying to catchup on tricking some tomytec trains out. Hokuetsu Express HK100 Hoshizora. Added tn couplers. Took a little carving to get the truck to clear it and hacking up the end skirts to fit in front of the tns and glue them on.

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Ha looking at the picture I just noticed one of the dummy couplers fell out while working on the one chassis. Fixed!

 

I know I cheated with the knuckle tns, but that was all I had in gray and they uncouple better than the sharfenbergers.

 

jeff

 

 

 

[disturbman]

Ah! You do have trains, I had started to believe these were only legends 😉

[cteno4]

Bah we care nothing for the disbelievers, they are but slightly annoying trifles.

 

tonight’s efforts watching Star Trek III, Thomas finished off with proper black sharfenbergers and tonyed out with some modified greenmax diaphragms.

 

jeff

[Kamome]

@cteno4asked on my Adventures in HO thread about using Tamiya Panel line accent, in particular using with n gauge rolling stock. Thought i would share the way I do it, which is relatively easy and you generally get good results.

 

Firstly I always dilute my medium with Tamiya Enamel thinners. So it creates a sort of wash. Also as we are using enamels, make sure you have a brush with synthetic bristles. Enamel paint and thinners will destroy your beautiful hair brushes. 

 

I tend to mix black and dark brown to eye. You need very little for a n gauge locomotive so no need to go overboard. Once mixed with thinners you get a slightly translucent muddy colour.

 

If you watch youtube clips of this stuff being used, it tends to be used neat from the bottle, applied liberally to all the recesses before requiring a massive clean up once it has dried. Obviously it can be done this way, also you can use the attached brushes on the bottles but there is little to no control using these.

I use a fine Tamiya brush, as they’re very cheap. Item #87048.

Using a fine brush and because the medium has been diluted, it runs freely into the recesses of the model. Over spill is inevitable but the odd blotch where panel line has been added can be easily cleaned up with a clean brush, dipped in thinners and wiped so it is damp rather than dripping wet. This saves a lot of q tips being used. 
 

For general lines i use this muddy mix. I would also suggest this is suitable for light coloured rolling stock providing it is suitably diluted. You can always add more if the line is not as strong as you want. This 415 used this same colour just with more thinner.

 

If you are weathering diesel locos, you can obviously add more black to the mix for fans and vents that will get soiled with diesel soot. You can hopefully see the slight difference in tone between the general roof lines of this DD54 and then the fans and vents which have had more black added to the mix. Important to note, i still am not using the product neat for these areas. 

 

I should also add that ladders and steps were painted white using Tamiya enamel Flat white. XF-2

 

 

You will obviously get overspill on some areas as you apply the paint, but by using a clean brush damp with thinners again, you can get very clean edges. Use the side of your brush into the step foot boards so that the side of the brush wipes away paint above or below the ladder detail. Don’t use the tip of the brush as you will probably wipe away some of the detail you wanted.

 

I hope that helps others and happy detailing. I am by no means an expert but have just found a relatively error free way of giving you stock a little more realism. This is a good first step before adding further weathering to your trains. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Kamome

[cteno4]

Thanks mucho Kamome! Property much how I’ve done the dilute inks to do the same, just never done it with acrylic paints like this. Do the same as a muddy mix with black and a burnt sienna I have and dilute down to do very light layer at a time that any excess outside the line wipes off very easily and you can let dry see if dark enough and repeat if needed, I’ve been much shyer about doing the lines on my Japanese stock than I was with my old dirty American stuff that needed detail like this to pop them. Going to have to experiment some with the Japanese stock more!

 

jeff

[Kamome]

6 hours ago, cteno4 said:

just never done it with acrylic paints

Sorry for the minor correction, but I used enamel. This way you can remove all of the additions without trace if you don’t like it. Acrylic will leave some residue and I’ve found to my horror that acrylic thinner can lift some of the base colour paint as well or decals etc..

[Englehart]

my first try at weathering added some dirt using my wife's makeup 😅

 

[JR 500系]

13 hours ago, Englehart said:

my first try at weathering added some dirt using my wife's makeup 😅

 

 

Nice effect! Just make sure you get her a new set!  😛

[Englehart]

17 minutes ago, JR 500系 said:

 

Nice effect! Just make sure you get her a new set!  😛

yup got her new one this some cheap makeup great for weathering 😆

[ED75-775]

Some good weathering effects coming up on this thread! Meanwhile...

Today's attempt at bungling my way through repairs was to remove some excess glue from the roof of my Tomix 103 series set. I'd hoped that the roofs were grey moulded plastic - not so, they were painted grey and my attempt with acetone-based nail polish remover took some colour off. It wasn't until after I'd tried it that I noticed a warning on the bottle: "dangerous to plastics". Oops!

 

So, lesson learned. Use as little glue as possible to fix details down, do not attempt to remove gluemarks unless you want trouble, and remember - you are not always as clever as you first thought. In the short term I have carried out a temporary twenty-pace fix with Humbrol enamels, and I'm bidding on a replacement roof via Zenmarket along with some spare M.U. hoses. Originally I wanted both ends with M.U. hoses but only one made it on, the other two were cut too short or went - whee! - off to who knows where. No doubt we all have one or more of those kinds of story...😉

[disturbman]

Use white glue, you can wash the excess with a bit of water.

[ED75-775]

2 hours ago, disturbman said:

Use white glue, you can wash the excess with a bit of water.

Thanks! I should look into that and keep my Humbrol poly cement for building kits. So when we refer to white glue, are we talking PVA glue here? Or something else?

[disturbman]

Yes, PVA, white glue, carpenters glue, etc. It’s known under many names.

 

It’s also perfect for Sankei kits.

Edited August 21, 2021 by disturbman

[disturbman]

I fell down another rabbit hole. I ordered blackened wheel sets for some of my GM sets, enough to do two motor cars and six normal cars.

 

Swapping is very straightforward on the powered bogies due to GM simple design. Just need to remove the “cover” that also hold the Rapido coupler and swap the wheels.

 

It makes the set look a lot better, less toy-like. Another way to pointlessly spend money…

 

 

[Kamome]

I approve.

 

I was wondering whether instead of having to buy new blackened wheels all the time, I currently need 24 for my Chikis, a metal blackening agent could be used. 

 

Not sure how safe these substances are for this kind of application or whether it would cause other issues down the line (no pun intended)

 

[disturbman]

I have seen Susukuma use an airbrush to darkened/blackened the wheels of his sets.

 

https://youtube.com/user/kumakyu

[Kamome]

I may try this method as the Tomix wheels are not hugely expensive, but always seem difficult to find in the amount i need. I may also try some blackening agent just to test if it’s viable option. As these aren’t current collecting, i can mess some up and i still have a few shiny spares from my shikis.

[disturbman]

He usually masks the part of the wheel where the wheel and rail touch, like here: 
 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by disturbman