HINTS AND TIPS - THE FOLLOW ON
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Painting Models “Black†Pt 1
by Dave Starr
I never paint any rolling stock with pure black. A dark gray looks much better under layout lighting. Auto primer rattle cans come in dark gray, light gray and red. The dark grey is good on steam locomotives and other black rolling stock. It will cover anything, and dry good and flat. I decal right onto the auto primer and the decals settle right down. I help the decals out with Solva Set, and when completely dry, a top coat of Dullcote to blend the decals in
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Painting Models “Black†Pt 2
by Kevin Parson
This is my formula for "black":
4 Parts Black
1 Part Red
1 Part White
I have been using it for years. Never fails, always looks good under indoor lighting conditions. In the real world black looks gray because of the sun light intensity and the surface area that reflects it. We cannot duplicate sunlight indoors, or surface area on a scale model, so we need to paint grey.
.Military modelers call this "colour scaling", in effect, Panzer Gray on a 1/32 model will be darker than Panzer Gray on a 1/72 scale model. This is due to surface area making the color look different.
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Making Roads Pt 1
by David Petersen
To give a model road a bit of camber mark out where the road is to go width wise and approximately down the centre of what will be the road glue a piece of either 020 styrene sheet cut as a thin strip as narrow as possible you could use the next size or two up but do not go overboard with the camber as you do not need much. Then glue down you road as before and once dry your road should have camber to it. In place of the Styrene sheet you could use cardboard as well from a large cereal packet like Corn Flakes or similar, cut into narrow strips under the cork.
You could also use the cardboard packet approach to make the actual roadway surface as well if you cannot get any thin cork. Make the road surface wider than the actual roadway itself and use scenery materials at the sides of the road to blend it all in. The cardboard packet usually gives you a roughish surface as well if you use the inside of the box not the printed outer.
Glue it all down and let it dry thoroughly and then paint the surface what ever colour your road surface is going to be. If a bitumen road then a greyish colour if an old road surface and a more blacker color for new bitumen. Some bits of newer bitumen painted on a older road surface will look good too as the local council or whoever has filled up the pot holes or badly broken up surface in places. You can then detail away to your hearts content.
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Making Roads Pt 2
by Pat Donohue
When I make country roads I sometime extend the cork past the roadside into the paddock and put some stones or pieces underneath the cork to make undulations. I have also worked from a paddock to the fence line to the roadside, to the bitumen, to the roadside, to the fence line to the paddock.
In the paddock you need to add variations to the surface and also the colour Even crops will vary in colour and height especially if the paddock is undulating. Depending on the area you are replicating soil can be black, grey, brown, orange, red or yellowish. And a trick is to make the soil and foliage lighter in colour so that the trains are the feature.
On the fence line you need to think of firebreaks and usually shorter grass. Add some bare patches, especially near gates.
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Saving Home Printed Signs
by Mel Perry
When I make I normally print several “spares†and store them in individual labelled envelopes, it does not help my storage drawer space but I rarely have to go back and print them again and with Murphy’s law, the sign without a backup is the sign I would lose!
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Mixing Small amounts of Paint
by Trevor Gibbs
I model Canadian National which uses a Red/Orange or Orange/Red depending on the era for its “Red†nosed Diesels. To get the right proportion, I use an eye dropper with the two Tamiya paints and mix the contents into a small plastic lid or a soft drink bottle top with a 1:2 or 2:1 ratio.
The bottle top is glued to a card pad so it does not easily spill and the paint will not dry out as quickly as it would on a flat piece of plastic, thus allowing a little more working time.
If there are differences between batches ( and there will be, however slight), it can be explained with the different painting dates of the locos!
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Making Roads Pt 5
by Pat Donohue
One other thing to mention is that roads, lanes paths etc are added to the countryside. So make your roads blend in rather than being the feature. Most watercourses are lower so do not make rivers a high point. And most bridges will be as low as possible to save money.
To get an idea of bitumen take a walk down your local streets and take a few photos, you will not get much black, but plenty of grey, whitish, and sometimes muddy brown.
I am looking out my window now at the side street, The gutters are old and cracked, the bitumen is pale grey, the yellow lines are faded, and there is a muddy looking section where they dumped the soil while replacing a gas main last week. And a small length of nice black bitumen where they filled the trench.
On the main road the work is more defined, but pavers have lifted, the median strip has broken concrete sections so it is not a perfect straight line. Tree roots have lifted the road and footpath. The leaves are dropping so the gutters have leaves in them. In Jacaranda season Adelaide has a purple carpet when the blooms drop. Same after a dust storm or bushfire
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Ballasting Points
by Dave Nelson
When installing some of the Peco turnouts on my layout, I put a piece of black duct tape underneath the ties starting to the throwbar to the end of the points. The duct tape thus has its sticky side facing up. I trim the edges to be even with the ends of the ties. I put just enough ballast on the sticky part of the tape to hold (perhaps tamping it in with a Q tip) so the tape is completely covered. The ballast is lower than the ballast on the rest of the turnout (and rest of the track) but the turnout is ballasted and looks ballasted and the ballast does not interfere with the movement of the points or the throwbar. Only beneath the throwbar is there no ballast.
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Protecting Points when Ballasting
by Wayne Toth
I apply plastic-compatible oil to the tops of the ties over which the points move, and then parking the points at mid-throw before misting with wet water and applying the diluted white glue.
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Modelling Broken Window Panes
by Ed Sutorik
Many buildings around rail sites have broken windows replaced by wooden panels. If individual panes are replaced with wood, the wood is usually cut to fit and placed where the glass was. If there is a window with many panes, some of which are broken, sometimes a sheet of plywood is placed covering the whole thing. I would think inside or outside would "depend".
If you have got tilt-open windows, that might be best to use a "very thin piece of styrene" and print the wood filler with an ink jet printer. Cut out and install and if necessary glue it onto thin styrene.
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Painting Models “Black†Pt 1
by Dave Starr
I never paint any rolling stock with pure black. A dark gray looks much better under layout lighting. Auto primer rattle cans come in dark gray, light gray and red. The dark grey is good on steam locomotives and other black rolling stock. It will cover anything, and dry good and flat. I decal right onto the auto primer and the decals settle right down. I help the decals out with Solva Set, and when completely dry, a top coat of Dullcote to blend the decals in.
Posted
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Painting Models “Black†Pt 2
by Kevin Parson
This is my formula for "black":
4 Parts Black
1 Part Red
1 Part White
I have been using it for years. Never fails, always looks good under indoor lighting conditions. In the real world black looks gray because of the sun light intensity and the surface area that reflects it. We cannot duplicate sunlight indoors, or surface area on a scale model, so we need to paint grey.
.Military modelers call this "colour scaling", in effect, Panzer Gray on a 1/32 model will be darker than Panzer Gray on a 1/72 scale model. This is due to surface area making the color look different.
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Making Roads Pt 1
by David Peters
To give a model road a bit of camber mark out where the road is to go width wise and approximately down the centre of what will be the road glue a piece of either 020 styrene sheet cut as a thin strip as narrow as possible you could use the next size or two up but do not go overboard with the camber as you do not need much. Then glue down you road as before and once dry your road should have camber to it. In place of the Styrene sheet you could use cardboard as well from a large cereal packet like Corn Flakes or similar, cut into narrow strips under the cork.
You could also use the cardboard packet approach to make the actual roadway surface as well if you cannot get any thin cork. Make the road surface wider than the actual roadway itself and use scenery materials at the sides of the road to blend it all in. The cardboard packet usually gives you a roughish surface as well if you use the inside of the box not the printed outer.
Glue it all down and let it dry thoroughly and then paint the surface what ever colour your road surface is going to be. If a bitumen road then a greyish colour if an old road surface and a more blacker color for new bitumen. Some bits of newer bitumen painted on a older road surface will look good too as the local council or whoever has filled up the pot holes or badly broken up surface in places. You can then detail away to your hearts content.
Posted
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Making Roads Pt 2
by Pat Donohue
When I make country roads I sometime extend the cork past the roadside into the paddock and put some stones or pieces underneath the cork to make undulations. I have also worked from a paddock to the fence line to the roadside, to the bitumen, to the roadside, to the fence line to the paddock.
In the paddock you need to add variations to the surface and also the colour Even crops will vary in colour and height especially if the paddock is undulating. Depending on the area you are replicating soil can be black, grey, brown, orange, red or yellowish. And a trick is to make the soil and foliage lighter in colour so that the trains are the feature.
On the fence line you need to think of firebreaks and usually shorter grass. Add some bare patches, especially near gates.
On the roadside it is best for older roads to not be perfectly straight and the gravel can be any variation of local quarry products. Grey, white, yellow, orange and even mixtures if the grader has been through recently. low grass can be scattered through the areas and away from the road some small trees, clumps of weeds
Modern roads tend to be more distinct and have a larger camber. And that is where it often pays to extend the cork past the edge of the bitumen.
For the road I used enamel paint that I used for the fascia of the layout and while wet I sieve on the fines and dust from the handmade ballast jar. By varying the dust you use you can make old roads adding white and light grey, light and darker grey for newer roads and almost black for a new road.
The enamel paint helps the dust to stick better, and the dust, powder and acrylic paints can all be added by eye, allowed to dry and then be brushed away.
With all this weathering it is important to not use straight edges, just go with the flow.
For towns the edges of roads often do not have gutters and grass grows towards the edge of the road.
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Making Roads Pt 3
by Pat Donohue
In metro areas the gutters and footpaths are SOMETIMES more defined. However a lawn can run across a cement footpath and run into the gutter, bushes running up power poles,
Utilities are always digging up roads and the newer bitumen is always darker than the surrounding road and you can also add personnel access coverage points ( Yes… manhole covers ).
In places like Melbourne, the camber on the road is more pronounced in older areas and the gutters made from slabs of bluestone tend to become random over time so do not make them too straight.
One other thing to mention is that roads, lanes paths etc are added to the countryside. So make your roads blend in rather than being the feature. Most watercourses are lower so do not make rivers a high point. And most bridges will be as low as possible to save money.
To get an idea of bitumen take a walk down your local streets and take a few photos, you will not get much black, but plenty of grey, whitish, and sometimes muddy brown.
I am looking out my window now at the side street, The gutters are old and cracked, the bitumen is pale grey, the yellow lines are faded, and there is a muddy looking section where they dumped the soil while replacing a gas main last week. And a small length of nice black bitumen where they filled the trench.
On the main road the work is more defined, but pavers have lifted, the median strip has broken concrete sections so it is not a perfect straight line. Tree roots have lifted the road and footpath. The leaves are dropping so the gutters have leaves in them. In Jacaranda season Adelaide has a purple carpet when the blooms drop. Same after a dust storm or bushfire
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Protecting Points when ballasting
by Several Modellers
I just cover those places with strips of masking tape. You could also place some plastic sandwich wrap under the throwbar and points and pull it out after the glued ballast has set nearby (Crandall Overton)
I apply a few drops of Medium Oil to the hinges on the point rails and on the contact surfaces of the point rails. Same for the throwbar. Oil and water do not mix! (Richard Newton)
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Aligning Decals on Rollingstock Pt 1
by Wayne Toth
If the car or locomotive does not have details suitable to use as reference points (rivets, door latches, ladders, etc.) you could apply masking tape as a guide. Place it, sticky-side-down, on a sheet of glass and trim it (on both edges) to a suitable width. You will still need reference points to to apply it, but those could be the car's eaves or sills. If you need to align the decal side-to-side, you can use a scale rule and a pencil to place alignment marks on the tape. Done carefully, such a guide can be removed and re-used on the other side of the same car.
Another good tool to use is a set of dividers or even calipers: set them using an available reference point (eaves or sills if nothing else is available) and you can then use them to check all along a line or both ends of a block of lettering, such as car numbers or reporting marks.
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Aligning Decals on Rollingstock Pt 1b
by Wayne Toth
Keep in mind that a decal can usually be moved an almost infinite number of times as long as you do not apply setting solution to it…simply re-wet it and try again. It's worth the effort unless you do not mind being reminded of your carelessness every time you look at that car.
If the car or locomotive does not have details suitable to use as reference points (rivets, door latches, ladders, etc.) you could apply masking tape as a guide. Place it, sticky-side-down, on a sheet of glass and trim it (on both edges) to a suitable width. You'll still need reference points to to apply it, but those could be the car's eaves or sills. If you need to align the decal side-to-side, you can use a scale rule and a pencil to place alignment marks on the tape. Done carefully, such a guide can be removed and re-used on the other side of the same car.
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by Wayne Toth
Another good tool to use is a set of dividers or even calipers: set them using an available reference point (eaves or sills if nothing else is available) and you can then use them to check all along a line or both ends of a block of lettering, such as car numbers or reporting marks.
Also keep in mind that a decal can usually be moved an almost infinite number of times as long as you don't apply setting solution to it…simply re-wet it and try again. It's worth the effort unless you don't mind being reminded of your carelessness every time you look at that car.
Last edit: by xdford
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Another good tool to use is a set of dividers or even calipers: set them using an available reference point (eaves or sills if nothing else is available) and you can then use them to check all along a line or both ends of a block of lettering, such as car numbers or reporting marks.
Also keep in mind that a decal can usually be moved an almost infinite number of times as long as you don't apply setting solution to it…simply re-wet it and try again. It's worth the effort unless you don't mind being reminded of your carelessness every time you look at that car.
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