Talking Dirty...

<Written in early 2005>

In December of 2004 I finally finished a two year project by completing the Vollmer Neuffen station in 1-scale.  It's massive and beautiful, and looks even better thanks to some gentle weathering I did on the model.  The box cover shows the bright green rain gutters, shiny red walls, and pristine platform.  In addition, the windows have no window treatment, and a reasonably close inspection shows an empty shell.  Well, although I didn't go nuts and give the station full interior detail, I did hide the insides, and spent considerable time weathering and painting elements of the model to improve the appearance.

In the midst of my weathering I can to a point where I had completed the weathering but had diluted flat black paint (my weathering material) left over, and no convenient way to store it right then.  The solution?  Find something else to weather.

Here are the "victims", two gondolas from the 60's and 70's, dozens of which are easily found (yes, I know, the Belgian one not so much),  I picked the 5850 gondola, and, holding my breath, started painting.  I brushed on the mixture and wiped it off quickly, using up-and-down strokes with a cloth to get the excess paint off.  The result?  Not a bad weathering job, and only about ten minutes' work...

Here is the freshly weathered, grimy dirty, and infinitely better looking car as compared to a yet-to-be-soiled model.  I did end up painting the car in the background, too, and found that by diluting the paint more I could simulate less grime, while thicker paint stayed on the car more, giving it a grimier appearance.  The car in the front is the "second grimiest" car I made.

Next up was the Belgian version.  I had always enjoyed a mixed consist of the older and newer German (brown) gondolas with a few green (Belgian) ones thrown in for good measure, but the bright green was hard to take.  Taking brush in hand, I sacrificed a green one to this experiment...

Some difference, eh?  The one on the bottom isn't exactly in the newest condition, yet still looks too shiny and clean compared to the mildly weathered upper one. 

Finally, here are some more comparison shots of the two models...

And there you have it, a prototypically correct grimy train!  I finished all my gondolas (9 of the older style) in about two hours.  I also tried to weather the newer ones, which changed their color a bit, giving them a bit of a gray hue.  I suggest using a pretty thin (two parts thinner to one part paint) wash for the newer style.  My next step will be to prepare coal inserts for these cars to finish my coal train.  Then if I could just get to building a layout and run these models...