At last all three switches have now been airbrushed. The procedure used is not that complicated in itself, but unfortunately it tends to take some time, because of the little small steps. I settled on this after documenting around the web, and testing on several rail ties strips. It all starts with cleaning the rail ties. For this I use a container large enough to hold the piece needing to be airbrushed, and filling this with water and a bit of liquid dishwashing detergent. Next an old toothbrush is used to clean the ties thouroughly. The whole point of doing this is to remove all the grease or any other debris that's still left and might cause the paint not to stick properly. Water is then used to clean them, and the strips are then set to dry (a kitchen absorbant towel works best for this). In the meantime the paint is made. I use one third Tamiya XF-10 (flat brown), one tenth Tamiya XF-1 (flat black) and the rest of a bit over half is thinner (Tamiya X-20A). It's best to buy the bigger bottle of thinner, since the small one (50ml) will quickly run out. Next the tie strips are placed firmly on a newspaper using scotch tape - 3 glued to the underneath of the strip, and 2 on each of the 3 to hold it to the newspaper. I hang the newspaper so that the tie strip is upside down - and i've found 2 reasons for it - first, since my Pasche airbrush is bottle-fed, it means i can't tilt it too much because paint wan't be absorbed, however the airbrush stays perfectly horizontal since it only moves up and down (and left/right to get a good coating of the tie plates), and second, if a switch is being airbrushed, keeping it horizontal will get too much paint on the outside of the upper rail, since the paint mist will settle down. The airbrush is held about 10 - 15 cm from the target, and the movement is rather ample, as you need to go over each end as to avoid getting too much paint on the edges and less in the middle. I'm still unsure about the drying time after each coating, but it seems like anything more that half an hour in this 35 degree celsius summer days is enough. Now if this is a switch that's being painted, special measures need to be taken. Since I didn't buy the kit, that let's you assemble everything (ties, rails, etc), the whole completed switch has to be airbrushed. And for the paint to be removed easily after each coating, a q-tip dipped in little mineral oil is best. After the coat has dried, another q-tip with oil is used to clean to paint stuck to the rail heads, and also to prepare the rail for the next coating. After the last coat a q-tip with a bit of thinner is used to remove any trace of paint from the top and side of the rail heads.
Right now i've settled on 3 coats of the same colour, since it seems to produce the best results. From my experiments, there is a visible difference between the second and the third coating, so if you're planning to do your own airbrushing, i strongly suggest agains any shortcuts, since the effort to remove the glossy plastic look is well worth it in the end.
I remembered this weekend that i ordered some weathering stuff, namely Noch patina pulver (61165) and the Woodland Scenics Earth Color Kit (C1215). Since the WS kit is paint-based, and that kinda scared me off, i turned to the Noch weathering powders to see what could be done about the rail ties. The trouble with the ties, after they're airbrushed, is that they're pretty much the same colour, and so not that realistic. So i took a couple of tie strips that have been painted, and tested all the 8 pigments. The idea was to use a drybrushing technique - getting just a little bit of paint on the brush (preferablly old and stiff) and lightly touch on the details - in this case the wood details on the ties. The best results came with the ash and cement pigments - maybe because they're finer than the rest, and tend to leave just enough colour behind to get a nice effect ("less is more" seems to be a rule in weathering).
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