Weathering with Pan Pastels

A couple of days ago a freind of mine, Alex Brikoff, sent me a couple of pictures of his nicely weathered HO Scale refrigerator car. The weathering was done with Pan Pastels; a technique I had never tried. Since a had a large selection of Pan Pastels, I thought I would give it a go.

Here is my setup. After watching a couple of videos on YouTube, I decided to apply the pastels with paint brushes. Sponges and Q-Tips can also be used. I only used seven colors, browns, oxides, grays, and black.

My efforts started with the #463 shown below. It is a factory painted P-B-L Hybrid model.

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product. Since the flat finish "disappears" a lot of the initial weathering, several layers were applied; each followed by an application of clear flat. I think the result are a little bit better than those using Bragdon's or Daniel Smith powdered pigments (Construction Update #55).

Based upon how well the 463 turned out, I decided to weather one of my CONOCO tank cars. The same techniques were used. Again this car started out as a factory painted (glossy) P-B-L brass import. Tank cars are usually well maintained so just a dusting of "rust" was applied to the top of the tank and some earth/dust to the under frame and trucks.

The CONOCO tank car was followed by a PSC brass combine. I purchased this model on ebay. The model was a mixed bag. On the plus side was the interior. It was nicely done with seats, passengers and some freight stacked in the baggage compartment. Unfortunately the roof and car body were way to glossy and the windows were fogged. I think the fogging was the result of using clear styrene attached with ACC. The car was disassembled, the windows were replaced and the roof, car body, under frame and trucks were weathered.