Weathering Diesels
Solid Techniques Developed Over 150-plus Locomotives
CRAFTSMAN/William E. Botkin, photographs by author
SD45T–2 9287 Before any weathering of the body, apply one or more black wash coats using black paint com- bined with thinner in a 1-to-10 rati o. Be sure to keep the brush strokes verti cal to simulate the eff ect of dirt washed down by rain.
As an avid model railroad-
er, I really honed my locomotive weathering techniques when I vol- unteered to weather a large fleet at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum (CMRM), where I have been a long-time volunteer. The CMRM has a huge locomotive fleet — more than 200 in all. Of course, not all are out on the lay- out at once, but with 14 regularly scheduled freights, that accounts for more than 60 individual loco- motive units plus at least ten yard switchers. There are many more kept as spares as needed. Most of the CMRM locomotives
assigned to the scheduled freights were weathered during the past couple of years when I volun- teered to take on the job. I had no idea how large a job it was until I was well into it. Over the course of weathering 100-plus locomo- tives for the museum plus 50 of
60 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
my own, I developed standardized processes to facilitate the work that was both efficient and realis- tic. These techniques can be used to weather one or ten locomotives. Why bother to weather your locomotives at all? Weathering rolling stock, particularly the lo- comotives, transforms what looks like an accurate toy model to a re- alistic representation of a working locomotive. One of the most glar- ing differences between a weath- ered locomotive and one that is not is the look of the trucks and fuel tanks. Compare the two Erie Lackawanna SD45–2s – one weathered and one out of the box from Athearn. While the unweath- ered model is beautifully detailed, it looks like a toy. Even brand- new units on a railroad start to accumulate dust and dirt on their first trip over the road, especially on the trucks and fuel tank.
One of the very first things I do
when working on weathering is to study prototype photos of the lo- comotive to see real weathering ef- fects. If you have access to photos of the actual locomotive in ques- tion, so much the better to accu- rately portray real-life weathering. One source for prototype pho-
tos is the Internet. You can often find good photos on the Internet by doing searches of a particu- lar type of locomotive and a par- ticular railroad. For example, you could search “Photos Erie Lacka- wanna SD45,” and you will likely find numerous links and imag- es. There are at least three good websites as well that are helpful, including the Fallen Flags site (
www.rr-fallenflags.org/)
that
is organized by railroad and lo- comotive type;
RailPictures.net, (
www.railpictures.net/), where you can perform searches by rail-
WEATHERING DIESELS
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