Englewood 303: Weathered…

The Lifelike SW1200 in N scale I shared earlier in the month is now ‘finished’, after some weathering of the bodywork…

I say finished, of course I suspect I will revisit the ‘finish’ in time, especially the chassis and truck side frames. However, it has been a good experiment and one that has taught me much about working in this smaller scale.

Whereas with the detail I was treading a line between realism and robustness, the paintwork and weathering have required an increase in finesse. The shortcomings in my techniques and methods, that are too small to notice in H0 and larger, stand out in these cruel close ups. The paintwork probably wasn’t smooth enough to start with, the airbrush produces a very fine mist but you can see the individual ‘drops’ of paint under this level of magnification… things to consider on future models.

Mind, yellow isn’t the most forgiving - there is no where to hide! I used a dark brown pin wash to touch along the door edges, the grills and handrails and this has provided some welcome relief… this was then toned down with the airbrush, softening edges and adding some exhaust to the flat top surfaces.

The result passes muster even under close examination, of course in reality it will be viewed from more than a foot away and form part of a larger composition. It has a realism that I hope to match fairly easily across all my modelling in this scale, building a believable result, worthy of representing the prototype in a landscape. To show just how cruel these closeups are, here is the finished model alongside a modern British 50p piece…

Next up, I’ve got a Simpson SW900 and the red and silver liveried Englewood SW1200 on the bench, so as always, more soon…