A lot of modellers I notice have fantastic looking trains but with no weathering. To me it used to be something I didn't think about, but as I have been more into weathering my fleet of wagons and carriages I deemed it time to give some of my locos some dirt.
For this I'm using Auscision locos, and airbrushed Tamiya paints. The Auscision locos are top of the game, and they look great once weathered. It's a simple way to do it, and gives realistic results.
The premise behind using the Tamiya paints is they are extremely forgiving to work with. Acrylic paint can be washed away if you make a mistake, which if you're doing weathering for the first time you're more than likely going to do so as harsh as that may sound.
Before weathering I will fit Kadee No. 153 short shank whisker couplers. It's a modification that is a matter of taste, but that's mine. When fitting them, I will take a small cut out of the right hand side of the box to give the coupler more clearance and movement. The buffing plates will pretty much touch between locos and work on corners, it looks very nice. I'll touch on the modification more in a later update.
With the 421 and 422 to begin with I remove the body from the chassis. I think it's easier to focus on 2 parts instead of a whole item to begin with. Later on the two will be weathered together. A key note, I will not weather at more than 25psi for those who wish to know. I began by spraying some XF52 Flat Earth thinned with Tamiya X20A thinners (which I use with all of the paints airbrushed) across the underframe, around the bogies, pilots and anywhere road grime will fly up. From experience ballast dust and sanding dust from desanding equipment will make quite a mess, quite fast.
If you go too hard, a light coat of XF1 Flat Black brings things back to normalised proportions.
Once the chassis is satisfactory, I will reinstall the chassis and begin to hit the bottom of the body with XF52 Flat Earth to emulate some road grime again, which is normally a pretty light coat again. Not too heavy, just subtle.
Around the radiator vents or any intakes, I will ask off and give a thin and light coat of XF52 Flat Earth and XF1 Flat Black sprayed over the lot.
Occassionally I'll lightly spray the XF54 Sea Grey just to emulate some sun bleaching of the paint, but XF52 Flat Earth lightens it fine.
The roof will then get a light misting of XF52 Flat Earth and then some XF1 Flat Black to give the look of exhaust soot.
I finish up with just going over everything really lightly with XF52 Flat Earth and cleaning all the windows of over spray. Fuel stains are brush painted with straight XF1 Flat Black and then a little bit of gloss (Humbrol or anything) is added after Testors Dullcoat. Dullcoat is applied, and the windows are cleaned once more.
I typically seal with Testors Dullcoat as it has a really flat finish. It is however humidity sensitive so you have to be sure your paint is dry before applying it.
Similar process was done to my 421 however I kept it lighter.
A video would give a better description than my words could, but don't be afraid to try it on a piece of rollingstock that isn't worth much to muster the guts up to giving weathering a go.
Cheers, Mick.
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