Scalefour Forum

What photographs are you following for track colouring?

This track was getting 10 steam trains a day over it.

Note how the rust has gone onto the ballast under the rails.

Concrete sleepers in the picture, but I painted mine with an air brush, but masked off the sleepers.

Tim V wrote:This track was getting 10 steam trains a day over it.

Note how the rust has gone onto the ballast under the rails.

Concrete sleepers in the picture, but I painted mine with an air brush, but masked off the sleepers.

How did you avoid a hard edge to the rust when you did this Tim

The air bush was angled to hit the rails and chairs almost (but not quite) horizontally.

MikeH wrote:

Tim V wrote:This track was getting 10 steam trains a day over it.

Note how the rust has gone onto the ballast under the rails.

Concrete sleepers in the picture, but I painted mine with an air brush, but masked off the sleepers.

Thanks Tim, I will give using abit of masking tape a go

I did the job on Highbridge in a similar way but no masking tape.....still too hard an edge.
I used a piece of cardboard in gloved left hand. This enables fine control of the airbrush sprayed edges. Some track had brushed on rust which was thinned enamel and the weathering with murky ink in the airbrush.

Hi,

I'm not sure if your question is only about airbrushing?
I have tried painting the rail and plastic chairs separately before construction but didn't find it helped particularly. My initial idea about it was the hope that if the rail and the chairs were different colours or, actually, different shades of the same colour it would help add to the verisimilitude - show one's eye that they were different components, add sharp detail and get well away from looking like one colour/one piece. It didn't quite work that way. Painting the rail and then threading chairs on did no good for the painted rail. Painted plastic chairs were sometimes harder to thread on to the painted rail or slide along and the paint job then had to survive the glue. So touching up rails and chairs afterwards is a job to be done, and if weathered down afterwards you lose the detail you've been trying to add. And then, in all the historic photos of track in use that I've looked at and in all observation of track on my commute it would seem that metal chairs and metal rail covered in grime, dust and rust are the same colour anyway!

Andrew
London

In their book the chaps from St Merryn go into some detail regarding colours for trackwork.
They recommend different 'rust' shades for the rail and chairs. They do not, however, use plastic sleepered track of course.

Richard

BrockleyAndrew wrote:...in all the historic photos of track in use that I've looked at and in all observation of track on my commute it would seem that metal chairs and metal rail covered in grime, dust and rust are the same colour anyway!

I think that's true and goes for wooden sleepers and much of the basalt as well when the track had been down for a while, so I think you can overcomplicate this. As for masking, an airbrush will paint a line no wider than a felt tip pen if you ask it nicely so it quite possible to paint rail side and chairs from a near horizontal angle with only a little over spray on plaything that isn't vertical. What over-spray you do get works well as weathering.

MikeH wrote:Thanks all, I will avoid pre-painting the rail and chairs before I build then! Sounds like that wasn't such a great idea. I am quite new to this airbrushing so although I am using a fine needle it still ends up all over the sleepers so I think I might go with masking it off. I shall continue practising

Cheers

Alternatively you could use artists acrylic paints as I do. Using a wet in wet technique you do not get a hard line. Wet in wet is a method whereby you paint just water around the area and then using acrylic paint add to the area where you want the strongest colour, the paint will slowly creep through the water giving a soft edge. Sometimes it does need a little persuasion and I find the beauty of this medium is its quick drying properties.
Rob

MikeH wrote:Thanks all, I will avoid pre-painting the rail and chairs before I build then! Sounds like that wasn't such a great idea. I am quite new to this airbrushing so although I am using a fine needle it still ends up all over the sleepers so I think I might go with masking it off. I shall continue practising

Cheers

As Ian Rathbone teaches on the Missenden Abbey painting and lining courses, skill with an airbrush is simply down to practice# with it.

Get yourself a couple of old wagons and/or a locomotive from a swapmeet or bring and buy stand at a show, and use them for practice. It doesn't matter what the prototype is. Just so you can get used to thickness of line, angle of application and so on. And of course ask any questions on here.

You can (I do!) also "warm up" before doing any spraying on a model by just propping up a piece of cardboard and doing some test lines on that. I find that it helps me regain the feel of the airbrush trigger to control the paint flow properly, before I use it in anger on a model. I spray sufficiently infrequently that I need to do this each time to reacquaint myself with the airbrush, even though it's the same one that I have had for thirty years!

Cheers
Flymo

# and keeping the airbrush clean, and using fresh paint, but those are factors and not skills.

I don't know how much you have to do, but you don't have to use an airbrush - perfectly satisfactory results can be achieved using a small hand paintbrush.

DT

David Thorpe wrote:I don't know how much you have to do, but you don't have to use an airbrush - perfectly satisfactory results can be achieved using a small hand paintbrush.

DT

Agreed. I have used both. If track is well accessible I prefer brush for rust. If at arms length, I can control the air brush better, with the masking card mentioned above.

In both cases, final light filth is air brushed thin ink. Very easy to get the desirable variations.