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Painting and weathering track |
Hide those bright and shiny rails!
by Jeff Wilson
With a few simple techniques and some paint, you can turn shiny nickel-silver track into a near replica of the real thing.
| | Often we pay so much attention to painting and weathering locomotives and freight cars that we forget the track they run on is worthy of similar attention.
Today’s ready-to-use track generally has fine detail, including close-to-scale tie plates and spike heads, accurate rail profile, and wood grain molded into the plastic ties. However, the bright nickel-silver rail and shiny plastic ties detract from the appearance. A little time and paint can easily take care of this.
You can take painting track to as high a degree of detail as you want. Simply painting the ties and rail a uniform shade of flat brown is an improvement. You can go on to paint and weather the rail, individual ties, and even spikes and tie plates.
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Preparation
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Simply painting flextrack a uniform shade of brown is an improvement compared to unpainted flextrack.
| | You can paint track before or after it’s installed on a layout. The advantages of prepainting track are that you can do it in a spray booth or outdoors without worrying about paint fumes or getting stray paint on your layout or scenery.
One disadvantage of prepainting flextrack is that the plastic spike heads mask the rail, and as you bend the track some of the spikes move, revealing shiny areas that were shielded from the paint. Simply touch up these areas with a brush.
Painting track after it’s laid lets you get it working properly, with all feeder wires and gaps in place, before painting. If you do this, paint the track before adding scenery. Should you have to paint track in a scenicked area, use masking tape and paper to protect the scenery from overspray.
A disadvantage of painting track in place is that it can be awkward to get an airbrush into tight areas. Using solvent-based paint or spray cans is also a hazard in an enclosed room.
Track appearance is important, but not as vital as locomotive electrical contact. For good contact it’s important to ensure that you can easily remove paint from the railheads.
One way to do this is by applying a light coat of oil to the railheads before painting. Once the rail is painted a Bright Boy or similar track cleaner will easily remove the paint. It doesn't take much to apply the oil with a cloth – just wrap a corner of a rag around a fingertip and rub the cloth along the railhead, taking care not to get oil on the ties or sides of the rails.
Turnouts require special care to avoid gumming up the moving parts with paint. Before painting, mask along the points and throw bar. Brush-paint these areas later.
You’ll also have to clean paint from the rail before soldering feeder wires and from the rail ends before adding rail joiners.
Consider the colors you want to use. Wood ties on a heavily used main line are replaced often, thus are usually black or dark brown and are uniformly spaced.
Spurs and lightly traveled branch lines often have older ties that have weathered to medium or light gray, with much more variation in color and spacing.
Rail can be found in many shades of dark brown and dark rust while spurs, sidings, and branch lines sometimes have a brighter rust color.
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Painting
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Start by painting the ties and rail a dark brown color. If you have an airbrush you can use any flat dark brown, such as Polly Scale Railroad Tie Brown, Roof Brown, or Rail Brown, or mixtures of all.
Spray cans also do the job in short order. For the samples shown here I used Krylon spray paints including nos. 8142 Brown, 8147 Medium Brown, and 1317 Ruddy Brown Primer.
Cover the ties and rails from all angles, making sure the paint coats the sides of the rails.
The next step is to highlight the rails with streaks of lighter colors. An airbrush is handy for finer control, but you can use spray cans if you’re careful. Aim directly from the sides, just hitting the outside of the rail nearest you and the inside of the far rail. You can also do this step with a brush, but it will take a bit of time. Don’t worry if a little paint gets on the ties.
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Combination track and roadbed
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Painting the roadbed, rails, and ties greatly improved the appearance of this Life-Like True-Track.
| | Painting greatly improves the appearance of combination track and roadbed. Start by separating the track and roadbed if possible, then paint the track in the normal way. Once they’re dry, press the pieces back together.
If you’re working with track that can’t be separated, brush-paint the rails, give the roadbed a wash, and paint the ties individually.
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Weathering
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Drag a brush of Oily Black paint down the middle of the track to simulate grease and oil droppings.
| | You can stop at this point and have nice-looking track, but for a truly outstanding appearance you’ll need to break out a fine brush and highlight the details.
Paint individual ties with washes of grays, browns, and blacks for a varied appearance. These highlights should be subtle on mainline track, with more variations on lightly used track. I keep four mixes handy: black, grimy black, gray, and Railroad Tie Brown. Go ahead and dip your brush in more than one mix to create varied effects.
Well-used track often has a blackish streak down the middle created by grease and oil dripping from locomotives and cars. Re-create this effect with Polly Scale Oily Black paint.
If you really want to take your track to another level, get out a fine-point brush and some rust-colored paint and highlight the tie plates and spike heads. Although this often isn’t practical for an entire layout, it adds fine detail to foreground scenes.
When you’re finished, use an abrasive track cleaner to gently polish the railheads, and you’re ready for trains.
None of these techniques are difficult, and a bit of time and paint are all it takes to turn ordinary track into a worthy stage for your detailed locomotives and cars. | |
The above articles is the property of and is
the copyright of Kalmbach
Publishing Co. |
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