A weathered Freightliner 57
Entry posted by Jon020
1,145 views
Hello! Firstly, I feel I ought to apologise for my absence on this forum; I can’t quite believe how long it’s been since I did post anything here and there are plenty of reasons for this, but the most significant of these involve a reduced amount of time spent on railway modelling of late (work, life, other interests etc), and what railway modelling has been accomplished has been written in a thread over on the scalefour forum. The reason for that last item is that in modelling in scalefour, but loyalties were tied between the two forums, but when I was appointed as the New Member Support Officer for the Scalefour Society and put on “the committee” I felt my loyalties “pulled” in that direction. That said, the feedback over there has been great and I’ve felt quite at home in that decision, but when modelling directions deviate a little back to OO, the S4 forum is not best placed. Current Scalefour projects are idle at the moment, but they will pick up again, but in the interim, I decided that I ought to do something about the backlog of less-relevant-to-me models that were filling the cupboard.
However, it was by attending scaleforum on Saturday, that I returned home with the urge to get something finished, and this was as good a project as any as it just needed testing and buttoning back up.
One of these was a DCC Sound fitted Bachmann Freightliner 57. A nice model and fun to run – it ran on my friend’s loft layout for a few evenings a year or so ago, and at the time I must have robbed the speaker to fit into my BR Blue Backmann (rebuild/detailing) Class 47 project. Recently, I thought that the 57 deserved a better home, so I set about reinstating a replacement speaker (from Bachmann) with a view to placing it on ebay. Having noticed the number of these that find their way there, I thought I’d make mine a little different and apply detailing at one end (nothing different about that) and apply some weathering. Again, there’s little unusual about that, but i do pride myself in spending a little time and effort on these weathering jobs as i like them to look reasonable. Whilst many of these locos did end up looking quite filthy, it’s always (in my view) useful to work from photos. There are plenty of photos to be browsed via a google or bing image search and with a selection of small images to hand, I set about applying some muck.
I should also state that I’m no fan of filthy loco sides, just for the sake of it. Most locos will end up with an exhaust and oil stained roof and track and muck and ballast and oil stained underframe (bogies and tanks) and some muck will accumulate at the loco ends, both from being thrown up from underneath at the trailing end of the loco and from the trailing sooty exhausts... and anything in the atmosphere that comes their way. The loco sides are, however, usually subject to washer plants and, being vertical, less prone to dirt accumulation. However, anything that does adhere is prone to being washed away by the elements including rain/sleep/snow etc, so a streaking effect can be seen on plenty of locos especially if they’ve been left sat idle for a little while. Therefore, you will probably see that this is the effect that I’ve set out to represent, as seen in photos of the class (and of this loco) in service... with just a little track dirt that’s drifted to the loco body lower edges as a result of a recent working.
The first step with any shiny out-of-the-box loco is to tone everything back. Having already detailed one end with the pipework pertinent to this class of 57 when operated by Freightliner, and painted the bufferbeam and buffers (with layers of grime/oil representing mix of silver and black paints) and added polished silver metalcote inners to the buffer oleos, and then applying a few detail highlights to the bogies frames (including adding the yellow to the axle box covers), I set up my recently acquired spray booth to start work on the loco block/chassis and bogies. I removed the DCC sound chip (putting it carefully away) and fitted the blanking plate and then wired a small Hornby dc controller to the PCB power inputs. This allowed me to run the motor at a slow speed and hence drive the wheels... such that when I applied some track grime/sleeper dirt/black enamel paint mix by brush to the wheels (turning slowly) I was able to acquire a good even coverage; when the paint was applied, I was also able to use a slightly-wetted-in-white-spirit cotton bud tip to remove any over spill on the wheel tread faces ... and keep them electrically clean.
I then used the same (and later a slightly different variation) of the same shade of paint within the airbrush to apply a gentle/subtle patina of colour to the bogie frames, buffer beams and underframe tanks. Over a period of an hour or so, this colour mix was varied to darker shades and then through to lighter (similar to brake dust) shades lightly, enhancing the subtle patina of shades that would have built-up over time.
I then turned my attention to the body, initially (after allowing the maskol to dry over the glazing) I applied a few light whisps of the dirty underframe mix to the loco ends, removing much of this with the wetted cotton bud, slowly building up a very light ingrained dirt look to certain recesses.... but less is more, so most of it was removed. For the roof section, I started with a mix of mostly roof dirt and a little of one of the track browns, slowly applying the colour moving away from the exhaust ports; cab ends and most of the roof sections were covered and then cleaned away again leaving a little streaking and dirt accumulation at the ends and harder to reach (for the cleaners) recesses. Once dried, I applied a further mix of roof dirt in a similar but lighter manner, again moving away from the exhaust ports in each direction, producing a toned-down, rather than filthy, finish overall. The colour was darkened again to nearly a dirty back to deepen the more recent exhaust emissions nearer the ports.
The bodysides were cleaned of their overspray (not much) by dragging the aforementioned wetted cotton bud (clean ones each time) in vertical strokes down the sides. Whilst this cleaned the majority of the paint (and I had to apply a few wafts with the airbrush to built it up), it left some nice washed-out dirt marks down the bodyside, representing rain-washed dirt (or at least, that’s the look I was after – this was hardly a principle express loco).
Once dried, a few more roof dirt wafts with the airbrush built up this patina.
Some light application of thin black paint was applied into roof, bodysides and chassis crevices (including the bogie secondary springs) to enhance the shadows. The cant-rail grills were similarly treated to bring some depth to the grills.
Powders were applied to the bogie side frames and tanks, lightly applying a mix of black and brake-dust colours, all of which were “washed in” with some thinners to dilute and seal them into the crevices as intended. Some oil and fuel spill runs were applied to the tanks and bogies using the Tensocrom products.
The end result is of a worked, but kept reasonably well looked after loco... not one that’s been left to rot, but one that’s clearly having a working life and will probably get a wash and brush-up the next time it receives some deep maintenance, but for now, it remains in work. I’ll admit that I’ve applied a little artistic license, but the weathering style is based on photos of Freightliner 57s hard at work. I hope this appeals to someone who will, eventually, find it a good home.
The remaining photos illustrate a little more of the finished model... as it was sunny on Sunday, so I took the opportunity to grab some photos.
Thanks for reading....
Jonathan
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