On the plus side the good side is very good! I think you've just learned one if the valuable lessons of loco weathering! One side is always you'd favourite and that's the beauty of a layout only viewed from one side! If you want to repaint the oatch give it a go but I'd be tempted to put it down for a few dayys and start in something else!!! Chin up, I reckon she'd looking wonderful!

Yep, it's the unwritten rule of weathering, one side always looks better than the other!

Try gently sanding back your patch with very fine wet and dry paper, used wet. You want 1000 grit minimum, 1200+ would be ideal. That may reduce it in thickness enough to make it look like a cleaned patch.

Would a couple of washes of 'neutral' make any difference to the colour?

The rest of it is looking really good, and the patch doesn't look that bad.

Thanks for the kind comments and encouragement. I think maybe gutted was too strong a word to use - annoyed maybe? I haven't thrown my toys out of the pram though :D 

What I have done is strip the patch off (again, probably for the last time since there's not much paint thickness left there) and replaced it with a patch of Humbrol matt 28, slightly darkened with an off-black from the same range. It's lighter but closer to the right hue, I think. This also went on a bit better - I lifted the tape almost immediately and the edges are less steppy. I did lose the stencils from the switches, but that's not a problem since the real loco looks different to the factory markings in that area. I'm going to leave it to cure really hard before trying to do anything else though - I don't want to take the patch off by mistake...

After that I'll have a look at buffing and/or sanding it (possibly, gently) and then re-apply the neutral wash. But it's not urgent since as you point out I don't need to show that side. It's definitely a learning experience, but I reckon I could manage a renumbering now - it should be a lot easier to remove something which doesn't have the extra layer of metallic paint. So that's quite exciting.

One little thing I was *really* pleased with is that you can see the hi-vis through the cab window! I didn't set the shot up to make that happen, but it was a treat when I saw the close-up

Thanks for the links - it looks like 60011 is patch painted on the same seam as my patch, which is good for justification. Now you've got me wanting a blue one again, after resisting that desire last year

I did touch in the steps with silver but it looked a bit garish so I toned it down. Going through the pictures again it looks like I need a bit more - it's odd that the rub marks extend across the whole width of the step rather than just being in the middle.

Looks good, as previously mentioned I cannot understand it myself but it is true, one side always turns out better! Why is that?!!!

The side with the Corus silver door is the best anyway!

Which name plates did you use, Fox or Shawplan? Cannot remember which ones I used but they did cover the whole printed version.

Fox, since they were really easy to get sent out here. They were about 2mm too short.

Thanks Pete! I have another blog for the layout, plus various bits in the challenge thread. I haven't said much about the stream because I wasn't sure it would work - it took up to a week for each layer to stop being cloudy

In brief, it's Liquitex acrylic pouring medium, which can be poured in ~1mm layers and self-levels.  It's cheaper than the "for modellers" versions as well. It's applied over a flat base I built into the layout from the start, painted dark green/brown/black. The wide culvert has one layer, the field drain has three since there's a small weir and I didn't think to deal with the levels at construction time. There's also a bit of dead grass set in below the water level, but I'm not sure that worked very well - the grass on the banks tends to hide it.

There are some WIP pictures here which  might help.