All this while I wanted to keep my models “squeeky” clean. After seeing some beautiful weathered models, I think it is time to make them “realistically” well-used and dirty.

Vallejo and AK Interactive offer great acrylic paints and accessories for weathering. The Vallejo Model Air (for airbrushing vs Vallejo Model for paintbrushing) Railway Colors (Europe) seems like a good starting point for me. It has the necessary colors that I would need. They are:

71.001 White
71.014 Gunship Green
71.019 Camouflage Dark Green
71.028 Sand Yellow
71.037 Mud Brown
71.039 Hull Red
71.049 Sea Grey
71.057 Black
71.062 Aluminium (Metallic)
71.069 Rust (Metallic)
71.076 Skin Tone
71.078 Yellow RLM04
71.080 Rust
71.084 Fire Red
71.090 Deep Sky
70.522 Satin Varnish

Vallejo Model Air set of 16 acrylic paints in Railway Colors IEurope) is a good starting point.

AK Interactive weathering pencils in set of 5 or a complete set of 37 make weathering easier.

I prepared a weathering toolbox which I can bring along anywhere and bought a painting workstation to organise my work.

My weathering toolbox – all that I need to weather (Foto: Jimmy Low (c))

And a painting workstation. Sorry for the mess around the workstation (Foto: Jimmy Low (c))

In addition, color pigments powder or in form of soft pastels come in handy for weathering purposes. For them I use Koh-i-Noor Toison D’Or soft pastel sets. There is a set of 12 in grey tones, from white all the way to black and in earth tones.

Koh-i-Noor soft pastels sets are handy addition to weathering (Foto: Jimmy Low (c))

Here is an example of weathering concrete rail sleepers using the combinations of the above elements.

There are a few YouTube channels that I am following that give great tips and techniques on weathering. These are (non exhaustive list): Sebb’s 1zu87, Modellbahn Junge, Alex Anlage (model railway-related in German), Night Shift and Genessis Models (tabletop/wargames, airbrushing)