Weathering freight cars without an airbrush
With just a dry brushing of rusty brown on these underframes (right) they have al- ready begun to take on a weathered appear- ance. The addition of an india ink wash and some chalk dust can blend it all together.
winter. Since I usually do more than six cars worth of wheels at a time, the rest go in a drawer. After two or three of these wheel painting sessions, I have enough extras to skip this operation once in a while. After the wheels are nice and dry, mount them in the trucks, and use a wire brush in a rotary tool to clean and polish the treads. I keep my safety glasses hanging on the rotary tool, so when I pick up the tool, they are right there. The first time you for- get the eye protection, could likely be your last day in the hobby. Eye protec- tion is really a no-brainer.
A wash of india ink is applied to the carbody (above). The author fa- vors brown toned inks for models of steel cars like this one, and black tones for wood cars. A bit of rust colored paint is dry brushed
With all the wheels well rusted, we turn to the trucks themselves. They, like the wheels, are rarely anything but dingy brownish black. Since most of the moldings are shiny black, I want to tone them down with a dry-brushed light gray. Dry-brushing is just as the name implies, the brush is mostly dry, transferring little color to the model. Load your brush, and “paint” most of the paint off the brush on a piece of scrap. When the paint is streaking nicely on the scrap, stroke the model with the dry-brush. Repeat the process with a rusty brown. We will come back to the trucks later.
Assemble the floor/underframe in the usual manner, and then dry-brush more rusty brown on the entire under- frame, but avoid the couplers. Getting
72 JULY 2013
over the Pennsy logo (below left) and then smeared down the face of the car. The author uses his thumb to do this (below right). It’s not hi-tech, but it gets the job done with convincing results.
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