How did you do the lining?

Sorry to be a pest, but how do you paint your teak coaches?

How did you do the lining?

The boiler bands are plain white paper (the sort you buy for computer printers) which I ran a ballpoint pen over and then cut to around 1.5mm thickness. (I usually find you need about 400mm to do all the boiler bands). 

The cab sidesheets and tender are a bit more involved.  Start off by taking a sheet of the computer paper and giving it two or three coats of the same paint used on the model.  Once this has dried, draw out in pencil the outlines of the tender and cab sheets. 

(Now comes the iffy bit...)

To actually form the lining I use masking tape, gently pressed down, to leave a line around 1.5- 2mm in thickness which I then paint over with white enamel paint.  Once this has dried I remove the masking tape and touch in with a small brush where the white may have bled.  I then use a ballpoint pen for the black middle line. 

Then it is a fairly straight-forward case of cutting out the panels and gluing them to the model using PVA glue. 

Sorry to be a pest, but how do you paint your teak coaches?

The best method I have yet found is to use enamel paints.  They dry slower so you have more time to manipulate the paint. 

I start off with two coats of gloss yellow enamel.  Once this has thoroughly dried (and it does have to be thoroughly dry because otherwise there's a danger it can be rubbed off), I use a satin mid-brown.  I try not to load the brush too heavily and I work the paint in the direction that I eventually want the grain to be (ie- horizontal on lower panels and vertical on upper panels). Try to work for long, fast brush strokes, spreading the paint as thin as possible.  It seems counter-intuitive but I am actually looking for a poor (read- thin and streaky) paint finish here- you want the yellow to show through and you want the brown to have the appearance of wood grain.  If there is too much brown I wipe a little off with a cloth, if there is too little I put more on. 

Once it has dried it usually looks pretty drab and dull, but a final coat of varnish brings the finish up beautifully. 

Hope this helps.