Commission: MDO weathering…

The procession of smaller commissions crossing the bench continues, mind this six wagon batch isn’t quite as small as some. Six lovely Accurascale MDOs here for bringing to life…

These six wagons have been individually weathered based upon prototype photographs. Paul Bartlett’s website is a wonderful resource for this as in my experience no two minerals are alike, and although I could make up the patterns it seems easier to work from a reference. Using Humbrol 98, 33 and 133 I build up the patterns, washes and detail painting. A wide flat brush helps with streaking (but do make sure it’s vertical).

There are a variety of cleanliness too, using the airbrush with 125, 133 and 27004 mix (245 stocks are running low, as are 133, sadly). This softens the edge of the washes and adds a soft tonal variation. These examples are incredibly pale grey out of the box! The interiors were given a dirty wash, and once dry blown over with Humbrol 27004 which gives a slight metallic sheen to the finish inside, just the sort of finish I was after.

You might expect six wagons each weathered with different patterns of flaking paint and rust to feel disjointed and unpleasant to the eye, but when I lined all 6 up on Rushcliffe they just felt right. Our eyes don’t see the chaos, they feel comfortable with the familiar pattern observed first or second hand.

The finesse of these Accurascale wagons is wonderful. The underframe equipment, levers, linkages and such just feel so luxurious. Fine but not fragile, matching the quality of paint finish. Breathing life into models of such quality is a delight, if you have a rake you’d like me to work on then get in touch, batch weathering can work out more cost effective than you might imagine. Until next time, more soon…

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