Aging and weathering Techniques for getting old/Bob Walker H
ow long does that new car smell last? Face it, nowadays, dealers use the same stuff to clean up used cars so they smell like new ones. Watch out for that first vacation, though. From then on the vehicle de- velops its own character, reflecting the lifestyle of its owner(s) and family. In my misspent youth, my car smelled like old pizza, coal smoke and cigarette butts. I no longer smoke or run coal burning locomotives, but pizza is sure- ly another matter. Buildings, like cars, take on a “per-
sona” of sorts as time passes. Sun, wind, rain and time all conspire to do bad things to objects, man made or oth- erwise. Look around, and you will see a rainbow of aging on everything-from the brand new to the downright falling apart. After all, look what the Colorado River did to some flat land in northern Arizona, now referred to as the Grand Canyon. In our modeling efforts, we try to capture reality as much as we can, so we need to depict objects in that same range of decrepitude and well used dirtiness. (Is that a word?) As with any new project, it helps to have a good idea of what you want to end up with. If you set the parameters of the building before you start, some things will be obvious: construction material, color, degree of weathering, etc. Unless a building has just been painted, there will be a degree of weathering on the exposed surfaces.
On railroad and other industrial buildings, the process is even more rapid and apparent. In the steam era, coal smoke did a lot more than ruin some poor housewife’s laundry. Think about the age of the model, the mainte- nance it would (or would not) have re- ceived, and the general financial condi- tions of the ownership. One should ask what was it used for and what addi- tional factors was it subject to. There is a reason for all that black soot over the enginehouse door. All of these factors determine what the building will look like. Use modeler’s licence to fill in the rest of the blanks. Speaking of modeler’s licence, back in the 1950’s the notable John Allen built a two-stall enginehouse for a con- test. It was the first time a model de- picted the ravages of time (and pi- geons) in the model press. He modeled the leavings of these birds with small white streaks on the roof, painstaking-
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Scratchbuilder’s Corner
ly painted on with a small brush. The thin-skinned, and over-emotional were incensed at this “travesty” and bom- barded the magazines with anti- weathering hate mail. The weathering debate ensued as to whether it was re-
ally appropriate, and some of the let- ters to the editor at that time were pretty funny. In that era there seemed to be a more emotional element in the hobby than there is today. Anyway, those of us who believed in prototype reality won the day, and thus weather- ing became not only socially accept- able, but pretty much the norm. I model a railroad where the notion of new is a foreign concept. The newest locomotive is a secondhand 2-8-2 well over 30 years old. Most of the struc-
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
Structures (top) are logical candidates for aging, even on railroads that maintain them well. Re- member that the “wood”on carbodies and running boards (above) should be weathered, too.
APRIL 2013
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