Dirty Trucks

Amy's on her work's Christmas do and isn't back until tomorrow, therefore I've got an evening to myself. So, with a beer and a Bond film on the go, I got stuck into a bit of modelling.

Bachmann recently released the quite stunning Cory Brothers 7 plank wagon, weathered and, all in all, looking quite grotty. I was very tempted to buy one, but then decided that, already owning a Hornby version in pristine condition, I should just do a bit of 'proper' modelling and weather that myself.

Having dug the model out I realised I'd forgotten that, on receipt of it, I'd had a little go at weathering it with a bit of dry brushing. It was pretty rubbish so after a quick splash of water I'd rubbed it off and it was back as new.

After that, I lightly scrubbed the surface with a craft knife to distress some of the lettering on the sides. In some cases I totally removed the lettering on planks, with the aim of priming and repainting these to indicate replacement panels.

Then I primed (acrylic) the replacement panels and then dry brushed the chassis of the truck to lose the sheen of the black plastic.

  

After that the next stage was to paint the replacement panels brown. As soon as the paint was applied I dabbed at it with a small cloth to remove the paint, leaving a slightly grainy effect (it looks ok from a distance) on those panels.

The next stage involved dry brushing all over the wagon with the primer. Again, the aim was just to tone down the black plastic effect that the wagon suffered from. On the wagon ends I feel I may have overdone it, so there will be a little reworking of that in the future.

The final job was to dry brush (a technique I love) the wagons with the brown paint again, this time on the underframe and around rivets and metalwork to try to indicate a light rusting effect. This can just about be seen on the pictures but I'll probably add a bit more work to this, potentially using a lighter shade - I have a 'burnt sienna' somewhere that will do the trick I'm sure.

Overall, I'm really very happy with the wagon. Perhaps it is a little too lived in, but I'm applying 'rule 1' of railway modelling. It was a very pleasant way to spend half an hour too.

Next steps: weather the Sentinel and decide on a layout plan to run both the loco and this wagon on!