Thursday, June 4, 2015

Weathering Locomotives

Well, it's been a long while since I've done any work on the layout.  I have mostly been focused on working on the Pacific Desert Lines layout of the San Diego Society of N Scale at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.  I've also been doing work converting quite a few of my rolling stock to Z scale couplers and installing Loksound decoders in my locomotives.

This past weekend I decided it was time to finally start weathering some of my locomotives.  I follow the Fishplate Films channel on Youtube, and Gregg did a video on weathering with washes.  I used his formula for the wash thinner (3 parts distilled water, 1 part ammonia-free Windex, 1 part denatured alcohol, and 5 drops of pure glycerine per 750ml of the distilled water/Windex/denatured alcohol solution).  I made up a batch of a black wash that was 80% thinner solution and 20% Polly S grimy black.

I chose one of my Fox Valley ES44ACs to be the first to be weathered.  I cleaned the locomotive shell using a Q-tip and ammonia-free Windex before applying black wash to the locomotive shell with a fine brush.  The wash flowed very well in all the panel lines.  I would apply the wash to the grill areas and let it sit in a pool to darken the grills per the photo I had of the prototype locomotive.  I did several applications of the wash to the grills and got them to where I thought it looked pretty close to the prototype.

I then took out the airbrush and used the washes (I added a little more paint to the mix) to spray several different layers.  I started with Polly S grimy black on the roof of the locomotive, and then I used Polly S earth on the sides of the locomotive cab and along the walkways and pilot areas.  Some weathering powders came next, using Bragdon Enterprises soot on the grills and then some earth and dark earth colors around the front sides of the locomotives.  Then I sealed it all up with a coat of Polly S clear flat.

I'm very happy with the results for this first time and know I will get even better at it with practice.