Weathering & Detailing - What’s Your Opinions!

[Kanpai Keith]

What are people’s opinions on weathering and detailing their models?

 

Are you in the “No way am I messing about with my precious precious models” camp or are you in the “definitely transforms it from toylike to a realistic scale model” camp?

 

 

[Kiha66]

I think realistic weathering can really improve the look of a model.  Even just a tiny bit can make it stand out a lot more.  That said, I feel a train with mixed weathered and unweathered models looks weirder than a train of all clean cars.  I haven't weathered many of my trains, and probably wont do more until I can do whole trains at once.

 

I'm also in the "less is more" camp when it comes to weathering.  Personally I prefer a model with a little dirt to bring out the details in the model, rather than trains that are completely covered in soot and grime. 

[Cat]

Big fan of weathering rolling stock and buildings.  Even a little bit will add a lot of life.

Passenger trains, I weather all at once and fairly lightly.  They get cleaned regularly, but even a short time running on the tracks and they'll be picking up ballast dust.  For our particular trains, I've hunted out YouTube videos of them for reference.  Finding high angle views shot from an overpass is a critical addition to platform views.  The side-scrubbers don't get the roofs clean, and that's the part of the model you'll be looking at the most when it's running on the layout.

For freight engines, I've googled the particular engine number and found images of the exact ones in our fleet.  They are much cleaner than I expected for freight haulers (coming from a US perspective), but still weathered if they've been out working at all.  The koki flatbeds on the other hand tend to be pretty worn in.