Details, Details…

Recently spent a fair bit of time on yet another project that required some photos of the layout. I realized that I would need some more details so the area (specifically the model Wheelerville station) would look less “sterile” on close-up model photos.

So, I spent a number of evenings since the past holiday season assembling and painting  some detail parts. This process can take just as much time as larger projects if proper attention is paid to the process, specifically removal of flash, and proper painting and weathering. IMHO, even the smallest detail parts need at least a misting of Dullcoat, and better yet, a dark wash to give the object more depth and texture. Many times in the hobby press, the illusion of reality in an otherwise-beautiful model railroad photo is spoiled by shiny, smooth scale figures. I’ve noticed this especially regarding HO scale cattle, of all things. Otherwise top-notch modelers forget to weather their cows! I grew up around cows, and they are always dirty around their legs and “undercarriage”. Smooth and shiny is exactly what they are not…

Painting scale figures is nearly an entire other hobby discipline, so I won’t go into that here. I’ll just touch upon the work I did recently, which did not include any scale figures.

In the quest for “texture” I spent a fruitless evening trying to apply “grab irons” to Tichy HO scale milk cans. Real milk cans have handles on them, and fine bands on the top and bottom, and are often rusty/dirty on the outside where the galvanizing has started to fail.

The Tichy milk cans are completely smooth, and lack any texture at all:

Thus the attempt to add handles with .008″ wire. The effort was a complete waste of time. I got a few holes drilled (difficult on the smooth plastic surface) and got a few handles attached, but there was no uniformity from side-to-side or can-to can.

Lucky, I found some HO scale cans on Shapeways, and ordered one set to try out. This was my first foray into the 3-D printing world, and the cans I received were exquisite. The downside was the shipping and handling fees from Shapeways, which essentially doubled the cost. In the future I may see if multiple printed objects from different vendors can be combined to alleviate this somewhat.

Anyway, you can see the level of detail on these cans compared to the Tichy cans after painting and a dark wash, fixed with a misting of Dullcoat:

Some other detail pieces included a Jordan Model-T converted into a rail speeder. The Jordan vehicles are out of production, and are extremely fiddly to assemble, but with care make very finely-detailed models. I replaced the spoked wheels and tires with small flanged wheels from the Tichy hand-car set:

Along with vehicles, Jordan also made baggage wagons, which are as delicate and fiddly as vintage autos, but also look very lacy and detailed when finished:

Some Tichy crates, roughed up the plastic with a scratch-brush, painted with Tamiya deck tan, artist’s oils and turpenoid wash fixed with Dullcoat:

Lastly, a Faller bench, painted with the wood parts drybrushed to look like fading/peeling paint, then the usual wash and Dullcoat:

I also tried to make some mailbags out of Sculpy polymer modeling clay which turned out just “OK”, but adequate to my eye from normal viewing distance. You can see one mailbag on the baggage cart in the final photo:

With the details done, I shot the photos for the other project and got that wrapped up. On to the next project!

P.S. Don’t forget to weather your cows!