Track Painting, Pt. 2; or, "What Not To Do."

I continued with my track painting project the last couple nights.

After I gave the base "tan" coat a full 24 hours to cure, it was time to paint the rails. This required masking; because of the width of the tape, I had to do one rail at a time.

File under: Pain in the a**.

My plan was to use Floquil "roof brown" for the rails. Hey, I happened to have an aerosol can of it on hand! Lucky me! Let's just spray bomb the masked off rails! It will work perfectly and I won't have to clean up the airbrush!

Nope.

While the rails painted fine with the "spray bomb," there was a TON of bleed-under through the tape. Plus, the overspray got everywhere.

Yuck.

Some areas turned out OK, but in general I discovered that this project was going to require some touch-ups.

So, I decided to transition to the airbrush for the other rail. Masking first; I ran out of blue tape halfway through, which ended up being a good thing. Another learning moment: the white masking tape creates a cleaner line and is a bit easier to work with.

I'm still messing with the right formula for spraying Polly S through the airbrush. I suppose it won't be an issue once I run out of the paint, since they're not making it anymore...in any case, I laid down a coat with the airbrush and was rewarded with a much cleaner result.

Lesson 2: use the %&^($@ airbrush, dummy.

So, because of the overspray, I went in with a small flat brush and did touchups along the ties and spikes. This was the tedium I was trying to avoid in the first place, but the result worked out OK:

Touchups...looks much better!

So, from here, it was time for a liberal application of Grimy Black weathering powder to tone down the colors and blend everything together. Not much science to this part; grab a crappy brush and start slopping it on!

Pretty happy with the result; will look much better when ballasted. I might go back and do some selective application of some earth tones and rust.

I celebrated my finished track with a cold beer and some trains.

The sisters stage a meet.

The new addition even had a chance to pull the "varnish" for a bit.

I'm still deciding what direction to go with this new loco as far as detailing and kit-bashing. Add it to the project list...my 4-4-0 is still waiting in the wings impatiently as well.

That's all for now! Hopefully will have a few more work sessions this week to start getting basic ground cover and ballast in. I discovered a new ballasting method that I'm eager to try out and share.