Weathering the debate.
I’ve sent two locos over to Fred for some of his excellent weathering and he asked the question ”want to do you want” ? A reasonable request but not something I had given a lot of thought to. ”Well light I guess ” was my response. Fred went blank at this. Let’s be honest what is light? For that matter what is heavy? Fred referred me to the book GWR 4-6-0s by Derek Penney pub by Ian Allan in 1997 which I dug it out of my library to have a look at. I ‘d forgotten how good this book is. What you see is great photos, in colour, of locos in their day to day life just before they were let go. And these would have been some of the last good shots in colour that show us what we want. The Barking Bill photos are fantastic but show a period that I dont wish to remember.
You must also think about the actual film the photographer used as the films themselves change the colours due to the emulsions on the film - some have a blue tinge and others yellow. The key is to pick one thing in the picture that you know well and use that as your rule to blue or to green! One thing you will see on all locos in the 50s is a black sheen which was caused by the cleaners using parafin, it also gave a very satin finish. The smokebox was a matt finish and you will see that cleaning leaves a pattern in it. More difficult for us though is that you often see that the varnish in the paint starts to peel with the heat. With all locos once there’s a fire put in the box they get dirty, put them out on the track one trip and they’ll be dirty.
Tags: weathering
pete waterman
May 13th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Hi Pete.
Fred has weathered four for me now. Two for customers and two for myself. There is no doubt in my mind that he really is a master of the weathering. He does like to work from colour pictures whenever possible
so if you have any photographs of the sort of effect you want, get them to him.
We have regular chats about what constitutes “light weathering”. To my eye , the Webb coal tank he did for Ken Payne would be in that category. He told me he weathered the model then wiped it off so it looked as though somebody had run a rag over it. Brilliant. He did a Royal Scot for me and has really caught that overall sheen of light grime you used to see on engines.
(Not of course on GWR ones which were kept very clean!).
regards
Graham Powell
May 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I like the fact Fred does his weathering from photos ive seen his work up close in his workshop, I am looking forward to getting my castle and A4 back from him. I still do weathering on OO gauge models for customers but when it comes to O gauge I wanted something a bit special. I am taking delivery of my Brttania soon and I have a fantastic photo of her on Cardiff general station in 1959 absolutley gleaming condition, grab holes on the smoke deflectors burnished along with the wheel tyres. but theres slight grime on the runnung plate where soot covered boots have been walking. I think this would be nice to replecate aswell as the swirling on the paint work from the parrafin soaked rags instead of the engine looking just out of the box. so I supose its the oposite to weathering, making the engine look as if its been cleaned so it still looks alive which is why I like weathering so much.
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
da best. Keep it going! Thank you