Some more SOMEthing: Painting Fence & Track

First of all, I wanted to do a big shout out to my friend Bill Gill for redoing the banner photo. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm a bit color blind (which is why I'm so afraid of doing scenery....) but even I realized that the banner photo had a greenish cast - especially after I saw how great it looked after Bill fixed it! So THANK YOU Bill! You've made the blog as well as the Valley Local website just a little bit better.

Bill hasn't been the only one working on the Valley Line though. Taking some of my own advice, I decided to do some more quick painting with the little bit of time I had after work tonight. . .

First, a little "writer's license".... I actually painted the fence a little while back. But it was certainly another one of those quick, high-impact-for-the-time projects. Just take a little "rust pen" (courtesy Woodland Scenics) and rub it on the barbed wire <ahem> fishing line . . .

BillS did the fence (and ground work, and bushes... but I digress) but I painted the line at least. And it looks pretty good. Certainly better than plain fishing line!

So now for tonight's project . . .

The Missus wanted to be up in the train room/den, so - after consulting an old blog post for what paints to use - I collected my paints and tools and brought my ballast/track test bed up to paint the ties. . .

The plan is to treat the track on this test bed as I would on the layout. That way I can see the effect not only of weathering the ties (individually!) and whether the weathering will hold up under ballast and adhesive, but also how different ballasts themselves will look with and without weathered ties and with different applications of adhesive and stains.

So you hopefully see above three distinct levels of weathering: 1) none (only spraybombed with brown paint), 2) relatively uniform. light weathering, drybrushing primarily two different colors, and 3) heavier, much more varied and heavier weathering using 3-5 different colors. Having these three options will hopefully give me a much better idea of whether the weathering is worth it after I ballast, apply adhesive, and (probably) stain with either India ink/alcohol and/or a Minwax brown stain wash.

Not bad progress for a little time this evening - and as I mentioned before, I'm a little further along....

Now - as always - I hope you'll weigh in with your thoughts on my work. And if any of you have any tips, suggestions, or warnings about what I'm doing here, please let me know! Bonus if you share your own experience and what's worked for you. As you can see, I'm trying hard to dial in a good, repeatable, and effective process for finishing my trackwork. I have a LOT of track to ballast in Saybrook and I'd sure rather not mess it up & have to redo it! %^)