Realistically Better Railway Sleepers - Easy Painting & Weathering Guide

Realistically Better Railway Sleepers  - Easy Painting & Weathering Guide

Introduction

Railway sleepers are an essential part of any railway, from in use on the trackwork, piled up by the side of the track to stockpiled in a rail engineer's yard, ready to be transported to a work site, so they're a great lineside detail to add to your model railway.  Recreating such scenes on a layout makes it more visually realistic & adds further scenic interest to your line side & yards. They also make interesting loads for engineer's wagons.  If you model in the following scales N, HO & OO scale, we have a range of laser cut & engraved sleepers that are ideal for the purpose. The bolt holes are pre-laser cut with two, three & four bolt-hole versions to choose from. They even include the indentation left by the rail chair too! The sleepers are supplied unpainted in their natural wood state. 

Table of Contents

  • What tools do I need?
  • What part numbers are the sleeper packs?
  • Painting
  • Weathering
  • Rust
  • New Sleepers

In this guide, we'll show you a very easy way to paint & weather the sleepers that's very quick to do. Perfect for an evening modelling session for new modellers to seasoned modellers.

What Tools Do I Need?

  • Craft knife
  • Small sanding stick or small flat file
  • Cutting mat
  • Noch 61158 Modelling paint pens pack
  • Tamiya Weathering Master Pack A (Sand & Mud) and also Pack C (Rust & Metals)

What part number are your sleeper packs?

They are as follows with the links below here

The pack we're using for this blog is the LX080-OO four-bolt-hole OO scale version. The pack contains 52 laser-cut real wood sleepers, based on the real 8ft 6in the full-size prototype.

Let's get started...

Removed the sleepers from the parts sheet by carefully cutting through the pips that hold the sleepers to the parts sheet. Lightly sand flush & smooth any pips on the sides of the sleepers that aren't flush.

Painting

First, the sleepers need to be painted. We’re using Noch 61158 Modelling Paint Pens Pack. The paint pens at one end have a flat wide tip for painting larger areas whilst at the other end a pointed tip for getting into corners & tight spots.

The Noch paint pens we’re using are as follows: 

  • 060 Warm Grey
  • 002 Dark Brown 
  • 090 Stone

Start by painting the base layer using  Warm Grey on some sleepers & on other sleepers paint the base layer dark brown. The paint pens are very quick in their drying time which speeds things along, a bonus if your modelling time is limited.

Once the paint has dried which is around 5 to 10 minutes,  a second paint coat is applied. The sleepers painted in a dark brown colour, apply warm Grey paint to them on various areas of the sleeper. This adds tone & colour variation. Repeat the process on the sleepers painted in warm grey, and apply dark brown paint on them to various areas of the sleeper. Again this adds tone & colour variation. The photo below shows the two examples we’ve painted to show this method. The area on & around the rail chair indentations has been left in just the first base coat of paint. 

Now we add the start of the dust effects to give that been-in-service look. For this, we switch over to using the stone-coloured paint pen, Paint the sleepers in the middle area between the rail chair indentations & also on the areas towards the sleeper ends. Make sure to paint the vertical sides of the sleepers. This starts to give the sleepers a dusty worn faded wooden look as shown in the photo below.

Weathering

For the weathering, we'll apply further dust effects using Tamiya Weathering Master Pack A.  Apply a little of the dark mud colour to the sleeper using the sponge applicator in the weathering pack. Then switch to the brush end of the applicator, and work in the dark mud colour to the sleeper. The brush helps spread, blend & soften the dark mud colour. In the photo below, we've left the highlighted areas clear of the weathering. 

Next, apply the light sand colour. Using the sponge applicator again, apply the light sand colour. Switch over to the brush & work the light sand into the sleeper to spread, blend & soften the light sand weathering. Note as before, we’ve avoided the areas where the rail chairs would sit on the sleeper.

Moving along. apply a little of the yellow sand colour as the final dusty dirt weathering to the sleeper. As before use the sponge applicator first then switch over to the brush to soften, spread & blend the yellow sand colour.

Rust

Where the rail chairs have sat on the sleepers, there may be a little rust from the underside of the rail chairs left on the sleeper.This is something I've seen & noted on some old disused sleepers on my travels over the years. So this has been replicated on our examples here using the orange colour from the Tamiya Weathering Master Pack C (Rust & Metals). Here we've applied & blended in a very small amount of orange to give a subtle hint of some rust left on the sleeper from the rail chair, as highlighted in the photo below.

On the sleeper at the rear in the photo below, a tiny amount of the gunmetal colour has been applied to the rail chair indentions 

New Sleepers

For new-looking unused sleepers, just paint the sleepers in the first or second base coats as shown in the photo below. New sleepers wouldn't have the rail chair indentations, so place the side with the chair indentations face down, so only the side without chair indentations is showing face up.

All that’s left to do is to place the sleepers onto your layout. The sleepers make for great wagon/truck loads, line side clutter, or laying around in yards. The photo below shows an engineers dept Turbot open wagon loaded with old sleepers removed from a work site.

Keep On Shuntin'!

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Comments(1)

Are the two bolt type the ones usually used by GWR modellers ?

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