Model Railroad Weathering Tips for Stock and Structures

As Bob Hayden puts it, you can spend as much time and energy as you want trying to wear down and finetune the components on your model railroad, but more often than not, it’s paint that’s going to give you that aged and worn out appearance you’re after. Experienced modelers like to utilize different kinds of paint to weather almost everything on their layouts, from rolling stock and locomotives to bridges and buildings. In this lesson, we teach you a few simple model railroad weathering tips you might consider for your next layout.

Expert model railroad weathering tips

To help you make the elements of your layout look like they’ve been worked and lived on for decades, master modeler Bob Hayden and host Allen Keller introduce some of the model railroad weathering tips Bob has used on his favorite layouts.

As with all expert model railroad weathering tips, the goal of Bob’s techniques is to achieve as natural an appearance as possible. To get that natural look on rolling stock and structures, Bob shows you the best way to use acrylic chalks to add dirt and wash effects to walls. He walks you through a step-by-step demonstration, teaching you the proper technique for each of his model railroad weathering tips, which involve a dry paintbrush and a small amount of chalk.

While he paints, Bob explains how these model railroad weathering tips differ slightly from those that most modelers use to weather. He begins by adding wash to a stock car and then moves on to give a base layer of dirt to the foundation of a building. He also talks a bit about the best way to add an unglossy finish to your new weathered railroad components. With Bob’s model railroad weathering tips, you can take your layouts to the next level of realism by giving them that expert level of aging and wear.