Commission: Huxfield Coal Company wagons...

Yesterday I shared photos of my own rake of coal wagons, today, the commission I was working on alongside them, an older rake of 5 plank coal wagons based upon the old Airfix 5 plank wagon now available through Dapol...

My customer had bought 5 of these 'Huxford and Co' wagons, and wanted to create a rake for a 'what if' project he is working on at the moment. However, this meant renumbering them all as out of the box they were all quite prominently numbers 153. This isn't so much of a problem these days with companies offering multiple identities on wagons, but in this case, it was a relatively straight forward job to draw up some custom transfers and have them made alongside the production batches for Planet Industrials.

The original numbers were gently removed with a knife and fibreglass pencil. I also took the time to effect some small repairs to the angle iron either side of the doors on some wagons, very prone to cracking, as well as 'nicking' the door on the top of the sides. These small adjustment and the number planks required a little touching up, with carefully mixed paint to match in as closely as possible. The models were sprayed with a gloss lacquer and the transfers applied, and then sealed with a matt lacquer, dull-cote in this case. They were now ready for weathering. The wagon interiors were painted in Humbrol 72, and the odd 'replacement' plank painted in the same colour. Humbrol 98 was dry brushed on to give a worn wood grain, and bring it to life - later on it would be dry brushed with Humbrol 64.

Weathering started as my usual approach of a wash (or two in this case), using Humbrol 33 and 98, wiped off in a vertical manner to allow collecting around planks, and bolt heads, and leave some feint vertical streaks. Two washes adds a bit of depth, and allows variation between wagons. The chassis was painted with a thicker mix of the same colour, and the metal axles painted with neat paint to dull their bright appearance. Each wagon was painted in it's entirety before moving on to the next.

The chassis and body were gently dry brushed in gun metal - this brings the edges to life, and brightens up an otherwise 'flat' appearance, giving subtle highlights to the plank edges and bolt heads.

A thicker darker mix of Humbrol 33 and 98 was mixed and applied in placed to represent chipped and dirty paint, and Humbrol 64 was dry brushed and stippled on the raw wood planks to add some extra texture. Another wash was added to the interior to darken this, and blend the finish together.

The final step was to airbrush coal dust and road dirt over the body, interior and chassis - this follows the techniques outlined in Martyn Welch's book 'The Art of Weathering', and has the effect of softening the finish and tying the techniques together into a coherent whole. It is important not to apply this to heavily as it builds up slowly, but then can go dark all of a sudden and spoil the subtle finish you're aiming for...

So it is possible to rework older wagons into something that passes muster in todays world of higher RTR standards, and renumbering a rake is a good way of starting this off - if you have a rake of wagons you'd like me to breathe life into then get in touch for a personal proposal. More soon...