I haven't posted anything that wasn't Whitemarsh for a while, but I had a play around with some stock yesterday, fitted Sprat + Winkle couplings to the outer ends of my 3-MOA rake, and then set about applying some weathering.

Fitting the couplings took a couple of attempts to figure out a good solution, but it turned out to be pretty easy. The coupling bar is a wide "staple" shape fitted into 0.4mm holes drilled up into the buffer shanks from below. The coupling itself hangs from a small staple glued into similar holes drilled up into the headstock where the coupler pocket was. It's nice and thick there so there's plenty of room. Fitting them this way up (with the staple points going into the surface) makes bending the staple harder - if it's not dead square you can get a ever-so-slightly stiff action. This can occasionally stop the couplers from returning to horizontal from the delayed position - there isn't much travel in that situation, so they're more likely to stick. I had to redo them once, and rubbed off most of the blackening in the process.

I also adjusted the position of one of the uncouplers and added another so I don't have to uncouple on the headshunt and then push the wagons back into the loop. The magnets are 3mm diameter by 6mm deep Neodymium ones - I think the same that John Teal was using for Kadees? They work really well for the S&Ws, with one magnet per uncoupling site being plenty, so you only have to drill a hole between the sleepers, push the magnet in, and ballast over it.

This afternoon I thought I'd see if I could get some weathering on, and if it was possible to do this quickly. Rather than working from a specific photo I looked at several, mainly from Martyn Read's collection, then went downstairs and worked on it without referring back so I wouldn't get bogged down. I'd be interested to see what people think of the results in comparison to e.g. the MKAs which were each based on a specific photo, at least to start with, and had a lot more time spent on them. The MOA above took about an hour and a half to get to this stage.

It looked like this originally:

And the B side, which got a bit dirtier than I wanted it to.

It still needs details (buffers, grabs, etc.) painting but see what you think. Looking at it now, the body is better than I thought, although rather blotchy from the acrylics, but the bogies need to be more brown, less grey, and have less contrast. Oh, and those wheel rims are nasty - must fix.

For reference - not that I'm suggesting anyone should follow this slapdash recipe, but it helps me to find the colours I used - this was a couple of washes of GW Graveyard Earth, wiped off with sponges and a wide brush, and more added to the flat brackets and other horizontal edges near the steps. I painted some spots on with a small brush, and drybrushed the yellow lip with the same colour and Calthan Brown (rusty-ish) using a large brush. I added a final drybrush over the whole body with Graveyard Earth to finish.

The underside was drybrushed with Vallejo Leather, using more paint on the brush than is usual, and this was brought up onto the lower sides. The bogies are a mix of this colour and a dark grey from the GW range, slopped on and wiped off the axle boxes. I washed them with the ever-useful Devlan Mud and touched in the springs with some MIG Old Rust, then drybrushed with the Leather again (if I remember it right). The wheels had a coat of the brown/grey mix with some MIG Dark Mud, a la Pelle Soeborg's US stuff.