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| Track weathered and ready for service. |
With track installed on two of the five modules, I decided to finish a small portion of the track on the MOW section to break up the tedium of installing rail anchors and distressing track. Because of the larger scale, all of the details can be seen which makes the process of completing the trackwork a bit more labor intensive than working in smaller scales. Below is the step by step of how the track will be completed on this layout.
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| Step 1: Distress track, detailed and ready for paint. |
The first step, which was completed a couple of weeks ago, was to detail and distress the track. In this case, I added rail anchors and then used a hobby knife and small razor saw to break up the square lines of the injected molded track. Atlas had molded in some decent wood grain but since I was looking to build a beat up industrial siding, the ties needed to look a little worn down. If I had been modeling a well-maintained Class I mainline, I probably wouldn't have taken this step.
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| Step Two: Paint Ties a light gray color as a base. |
When looking at most side tracks, the older ties tend to turn a gray color. So the first step was to paint the ties a base gray color. I mixed up random amounts of differing shades of gray and then painted the ties. I tried to avoid a uniform color and have subtle changes in color along the siding. In real life, ties don't weather at the same rate and are changed out at different times, leading to slightly different colors.
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| Step Three: Paint rails a rust color. |
With the ties painted, the next step was to paint the rail, rail anchors, and tie plates a rust color. While this takes a bit of time, neatness isn't hugely important. Often, the rust from the tie plates will weather the areas around it where it sits on the ties. As the paint dried, I feathered the brown onto the ties near the tie plates to help blend all of the colors together.
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| Step Four: Paint some ties a black color to represent ties which have recently been replaced. |
Speaking of replacing ties, one of the details I wanted to add was to
make the siding look like it recently had some ties replaced. In this
case, I simply paint a few random ties a black color.
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| Step Five: After ballast has been glued down, dry brush black down the center of the rails to represent oil and grim left by the slow speed switching movements of the locomotive in this area. |
After the paint dried for a day, I ballasted the track using Woodland Scenic medium gray ballast with a little bit of cinders mixed in. After the ballast was allowed to dry for a day, the final step was to add an oil streak down the center of the ties. While not as prevalent today with more environmentally friendly locomotives, it wasn't unusual to see a dark steak between the rails - especially in area where there was heavy, low speed switching - exactly what we have here. I dry bushed black paint between the rail covering the ties and ballast to gain the final effect. The finished trackwork can be seen at the beginning of the article.
Now, back to completing the trackwork on the rest of the modules so trains can be running soon!
