Weathering a 16 ton mineral wagon

[Boris]

Ok, so after about 8 years away from the hobby I've started back out again finishing off all the jobs I got fed up with and left when I lost interest in model railways.  However, having never actually weather anything before (a bit of dirt with an airbrush or the occasional wafting about of a Tamiya powder not withstanding), this has got this far with Vallejo paint, washes and maskol, but the question is - am I on the right lines?  If not, what do I need to do?

 

[Ben Alder]

The light is washing things out a bit, I think, but looks a good start to me. You might want to lose hours of your life  taking a wander through this topic on them...  http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/36891-16t-minerals/

[Boris]

The light is washing things out a bit, I think, but looks a good start to me. You might want to lose hours of your life  taking a wander through this topic on them...  http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/36891-16t-minerals/

Yeah, the lighting is pants and the mobile camera isn't great either, its not really that pale.  I will probably try some more photos in the daylight tomorrow

[Il Grifone]

The body is fine. It depends how worn you want the wagon to be. A bit more on the underframe is called for a bit of dirty grey wash and rust on the wheels and axles. Try to avoid the wheel tyres though as these were usually shiny, unless the wagon had been standing for a while and not earning its keep.

[Boris]

The body is fine. It depends how worn you want the wagon to be. A bit more on the underframe is called for a bit of dirty grey wash and rust on the wheels and axles. Try to avoid the wheel tyres though as these were usually shiny, unless the wagon had been standing for a while and not earning its keep.

I agree the underframe is tending towards being a bit too clean, Vallejo German Grey is a very dark grey and did rather well when heavily watered on the body sides, I'll probably use that as a base for the underframe wash.  Are we looking at rust or ferrite dust around the running gear?

[Barry O]

Boris

 

Have a gander at a real wagon or colour photos of one or two of them to see the colours and locations of dirt, rust etc on the wagon.

 

And have a look through the weathering and painting threads on RMWeb,

Baz

[Phil Bullock]

Great start Boris

 

Can recommend oil paint for spot rust - gives a bit of texture where the rust has erupted through and you can drag a very convincing streak downwards using turps or white spirit

 

Phil

[Captain Kernow]

I agree with what everyone else has said so far, Boris. As you say, it may be the lighting, but some rust patches can look quite dark, especially old rust, so it may help if you darken some of the patches a bit (apologies if that is already the case, but that the lighting doesn't show it).

 

Otherwise, yes, there's a lot of information on weathering on this forum, but 'The Art of Weathering' by Martyn Welch (Wild Swan Publications) is also an excellent source of information for all kinds of weathering.

 

Edit - adding a bit of talcum powder with enamel paints can help with the texture. I often start, when weathering a new RTR wagon, but giving it a waft-over with a weathering mix from the airbrush (you could brush paint this also) and then rubbing most of it off from the flat surfaces with cotton buds dampened (but not dripping) with enamel thinners. This leaves all kinds of dirt in the nooks and crannies and can form the basis for further weathering. Obviously such a mix (whether applied with an air brush or ordinary brush) needs to be fairly diluted.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Captain Kernow

[matto21]

You could try using a combination of salt and a sponge to get some random chipping. That's what I did here:

 

 

Matt

[Captain Kernow]

You could try using a combination of salt and a sponge to get some random chipping. That's what I did here:

 

Screenshot_20180609-135054~3.png

 

Matt

That's excellent.

 

The truth is, that these wagons weathered in so many different and varied ways.

[Boris]

Crikey, I forgot about salt chipping it, it never even occured to me to do that, and I do it on my model tanks all the time! Doh!

[The Johnster]

My method, for what it's worth, is to paint rust patches or paint chips until I think it looks right (this is not an exact science, and as I am modelling the 50s before the wagons got into the worst state is done with a light touch).  The underframe gets a coat of brake block/general muck, with the white end of the handbrake lever already painted on so that it gets a coat of weathering.  Then, because these wagons worked around collieries, coal hoists at ports, power stations, steelworks, and other places where there was likely to be a good bit of coal dust about the place, a further weathering wash of matt black is applied, starting at the top and working downwards to suggest rain streaking.  This is then rubbed off with tissue before the paint dries, the amount of rubbing off determining the extent of the filth.  No two wagons are the same, but there is an overall uniformity to a rake, highlighted by one or two clean ones and one or two very dirty ones.

 

I use acrylic paints, and keep two old tropical fish food pots full of watered down weathering mix, one matt black as stated and the other for general weathering.  This gets topped up every now and then with generally dirty loioking colours of all sorts, leftovers when new pots are bought, but mostly grey and brown, so the actual colour changes a little over time as well as the consistency, so one gets a slightly varied and not particularly predictable result!

 

Here are a pair of factory weathered Bachmann's which have had a coat of coal dust applied to them, illustrating the difference between the final result; the slope sided wagon is much darker.  

 

 

[matto21]

Applying Maskol (or similar) with a sponge sparingly works well too.

 

[BangRoad]

If you can find a copy of April 2018 Railway Modeller there is a good article on weathering a 16T mineral wagon in O gauge.