Commission: Scottish 29 in 00…

This Dapol Class 29 arrived last year and has been re-numbered and weathered to represent a Scottish machine for my customer's Renfrew Wharf layout...

The Dapol model is nicely detailed, and seems to my untrained eye to capture the look of the ugly prototypes well. My only comment regards the glazing which is lovely and flush but a little prismatic and not quite flat. I wonder if in time we'll see laser cut glazing fitted to the highest quality ready to run models out of the factory?

Renumbering was fairly straight forward, gently scraping the originals off with a brand new blade and then polishing the underlying paint. I also moved the warming flashes on the sides to match the prototype, and added further mis-matching ones on each end. The model includes some kind of vents above the cab windows that weren't on my customers chosen prototype so I carved these off carefully, smoothed primed and touched up the paintwork before weathering could begin.

No surprises in my techniques, a well trodden path of washes and airbrushed dirt with some micro painted streaks and grime finished off with dry brushed gunmetal on steps and buffers. The secret is to not rely on the airbrush alone, as that often leaves a model feeling flat and lifeless. By adding grime through washes and removing this to create streaks and grime around panels and in grilles, you need less applied with the airbrush itself, preserving some of the sheen of the original paint finish, and in my opinion, improving the realism of the end result. The build up of grime, as usual, is based upon the excellent colour photos I purchased from Colour Rail as part of the commission. Where possible I like to work from the prototype to get the position of streaks, leaks, dust and grime build up as on the real locomotive. In this instance you can see the outer ends of the bogies are browner than the centre, a common pattern on the prototype. The tops of the yellow on the cab ends, on the roof line have a build up of dirt, and the streaks from the gutters are beginning to stain the paint.

The result is a grimy lived in model that represents my customers chosen early 1970s period perfectly. If you have a ready to run model you'd like me to renumber or weather, breathing life into an otherwise finely detailed but dead model. Get in touch using the contact form on the menu of the home page (click the title above to get back to it) or through Facebook or the forums. I hope you've enjoyed this rather rambling dialogue on this model, as much as I did working on it! In the meantime, more soon...