this looks fantastic to me!

There was an article in the Continental Modeller a few years ago about weathering the hopper wagons that carry chalk. They literally scrape the chalk off the destination boadrs as the wagon sides literally get covered in the stuff (prototype photo's suggested up to 1-2cm!). The roof hatches arn't as bad because of the opening and closing.

But it is a great job. Chalk may be one of those weathering mediums where filling the wagon with chalk dust would show where it sits and lands. Depending on where it gets loaded/unloaded on you layout, you may want to put some chalk dust around that point as well.

As an aside, what do the Germans use all that chalk for?

John

What an excellent dirty paintworking on the railwaywagon...!
Don´t read what Webmaster did wrote to you...
Because if you are putting more colour on the wagon,you will destroy the right good image of dirty.
You are good to dirtypainting models...!

Goofy

Thanks for all your comments. About being too conservative. When it comes to weathering, I believe less is more. You can always add more weathering later, but it's next to impossible to remove weathering.

Some of my first weathering attempts looked horrible, because I added to much paint and I had no way of removing it without damaging the model or its original paint.

very nice.

The main thing is that the original "shiny" look is gone, so it looks credible. It looks like there is a layer of white dust over the whole wagon, as well as some detail enhancement, so that is just fine...

But the track cleaning pad does not look "prototypical"...

Pianne>
I used Vallejo acrylics paint. I only use acrylics, sine it's easy to thin/dissolve with water and it dosn't smell horrible like oil-based paints.

I started out with airbrushing a mixture of black and brown around the edges of the wagon. I then used a cotton swap with water to remove the paint from the large surface areas of the wagon. The result is, that the dark paint only sits around the edges of the wagon, makes them stand out a bit.

Next step was a thin, even layer of a mixture of "white chalk" and "flat brown", applied with airbrushed. I then proceeded to make the traces of chalk, still with my airbrush. This was simply done freehand.

All the rivets were drybrushed (= a brush with very, very little paint on) with a mix of "flat brown" and "oliy steel" to make them stand out.

The wheels and lower side of the wagon were airbrushed with a mix of "oliy grease" and "suciedad dirt". Only a thin layer.

Finally, I used a small brush to paint the grease stains on the buffers. The grease is made from "oily grease", "oily steel" and "metallic rust".

All of the above took me about an hour, but it was great fun.

Thanks for the explanation, Voller.

I recently acquired a decent compressor for my airbrush and plan to 'attack' some goods cars with it as well. (I need to experiment some more with thinning and pressure settings though). So pictures of weathering projects are a very welcome source of inspiration.

I've always used Humbrol enamel paints, but I've bought a bottle of Vallejo acrylic to test and I'm very impressed with the quality. The squeezable bottles also make it a lot easier to fill up the airbrush (getting paint out of a Humbrol can is a real mess!). I will switch to Vallejo acrylics completely over time.

Bravo¡¡ Voller, an extraordinary work.

Regards ximo.

The more you practice the better you will get. However the results so far are terrific.

NN

AFAIK, chalk is/was used to make cement (concrete) & glass.
Chalk is also used to make carbide (by melting cokes & chalk together), and from that, acetylene gas (Carbide was also used in lamps).
Chalk is also used in agriculture to raise the PH-value of the soil.