Track painting

Painting track is a bit of a tedious job but makes the world of difference to the realism of the layout. Fortunately, this is a very small layout - albeit rather packed with track.

Although I often use acrylics these days, I used enamels for the rail sides, I think they're likely to stick better and be harder wearing. The colour of rails can vary but they tend to be a dirty brown with an orangey-red tint, but rarely orange, as they are coated with a mix of deep rust, brake dust, and dirt thrown up from the ground and ballast. Here I mixed Humbrol colours in a small jar, with just a drop of thinners to help the mix flow. The brush is run along the rail sides coating both the rail and the rail fixings on the sleepers, including points but not where blades meet stock rails.

The 3-way point had the rails diverging to the disconnected route painted on their tops too, to reflect them being out-of-use. Excess paint is wiped of the rail top with kitchen towel, and when dry, a fibreglass stick is used to properly clean the rail head. 

The shiny sleepers need toning down too. Sleepers seem to be a grey-brown colour, so I mixed cheap artists acrylics - white with a drop of black and brown for a pale grey-brown. I used a cheap stiff flat brush - meant for kids, but even a 4-year old would find this one poor quality - filled with paint but with the excess wiped off on the palette. It's not dry brushing, which takes ages, but using a stippling motion angled towards the rails I applied the paint lightly. This leaves some of darker brown plastic showing through and the grain effect is highlighted, and allows the paint to be pushed around the rail fixing leaving that rusty brown. You can see from the paint left on the board surface the light stippled application. This proved to be relatively quick and quite effective.

While working on the track I cut away some sleepers from within the engine shed, and cut out the 3mm foamboard within it, to give the impression of an inspection pit. This was painted dark grey-black to make it look deeper than it is, along with the gaps between the sleepers where they will be under a floor so white doesn't show in the flangeways.