Weathering Track

One of the biggest critiques I have of other model railroads is the lack of weathering of the track. If the rails are left as bare nickel silver or brass, and the ties shiny plastic, it just doesn't look right. It is easy to fix too, so unless you are planning a temporary layout you really should make an effort to do so.

I started by spraying everything with several light coats of Rustoleum Camouflage "Earth Brown" (#1918). Since my layout had no backdrop yet, I could easily access both sides. The paint blended my three brands of track together (steel rails, brass rails, plastic ties, wood ties) into one uniform color that looked old, rusty, and dirty. 

I used a piece of cardboard as a mask so the paint didn't go everywhere, and ran out of the basement quickly afterwards so the fumes didn't kill me. Then, lacquer thinner was used to remove the paint from the tops of the rails. The only downside was the amount of shedding my paper towels left on the layout that I had to pick out with tweezers. I later switched to pieces of old T-shirts to clean the track . (Note: the color of the pictures is different because the one above is my ceiling lights, and the one below is using my portable LED spot lights).

The ties were then randomly painted either dark gray (to look like faded wood), brown (to look like old wood), black (to look newer creosoted wood), or left in their camo color. I didn't do every tie, and the gray treatment was used less than the other colors.

I then went over everything by drybrushing black. This makes the wood grain of the real wood ties "pop" out, and it also adds a layer of oil, grease, and filth to the ties to further blend them together. It is important to use cheap paint brushes for this as they get trashed pretty quick. I only painted the tops of the ties, not the sides (though I did do the ends on the tank car siding), because life is just too short for that.

As a finishing touch, the sides of the rails were painted Tamiya flat brown paint (#XF-10). I did all three rails because I don't like it when the center rail is left black. (Modelers do that to "hide" it but I think it just makes it stand out more). I did both sides of the rails for the sidings, but on the mainline I realized the backs weren't visible so I skipped them. Honestly, I am not sure if painting the rails brown was worth the effort. Oddly, in some areas the Tamiya paint dried shiny so I had to go over them again.

Then, the rail tops were given a light rub of lacquer thinner again to clean off any paint. Unfortunately, I happened to spill some on the foam. Thank goodness I had painted the foam first, or else the damage would have been much worse. It looks like the surface of the moon!

Now, it was ready for ballasting.