Weathering the rolling stock
The weathering turns the toy train into an astonishingly realistic miniature of its prototype.

Making it dirty, weathering, ageing or patina ... The activity has many names! What it is about is to make your locomotives and wagons look worn and used on your Model Railroad. Here are some of the different methods I use. I hope this page inspires more people to get started with the cleaning of locomotives and wagons. The brand of the rolling stock doesn´t really matter, if it´s Märklin, Marklin, Maerklin, Bachmann, Hornby, Roco or Fleischmann, it all requires the same methods.

One argument against weathering is that the sales value would be adversely affected. After over a hundred auctions on Tradera and eBay, I can say that my experience speaks to the opposite.

All you need is a photo from the reality of what you are going to breathe. You will need a brush, acrylic paint or oil paint with appropriate thinning, and a pack of dry pastel chalks with the associated scalpel.

/ Martin

Weathering a steamer DB BR 50
Looking at pictures of the real locomotive.

This video in the series of weathering different parts of the rolling stock, I show how to weather the German steam locomotives of the BR 50. One I only use paint brushes, paint and powder, while I use an airbrush when I weather the other. Both methods give approximately the same result.

Weathering stake cars
Looking at pictures of the real stake car.

This video in the series shows how to make a ultra realistic weathering of any type of stake cars. The weathering is quite straightforward to do and requires only a few different materials, but gives astonishingly realistic result.