"Painting" With Powders and Pastels

Here is an overall look at my finished structure.

Commentary by Peter Mumby................Photos by George Dutka

Several months ago George was over for a work session and I happened to show him an assembled set of loading bins that had been stashed away for many years.  My intention was to have it stand in as the pellet loader on my projected Marmoraton Mining scene.  The prototype loader featured three bins, whereas the model had five, but the basic outline was reasonably represented by this structure.  The kit from which it was built must have been available for many years.  I identified it as a Kibri "Gravel Works," item #405-9805 in the 2015 Walthers catalogue @ $45.99 US.  My version had been picked up at a long forgotten flea market, but seemed to have been neatly assembled.  Moulded in shades of red, brown, grey, green and white, it lacked the gritty look of the prototype bins I remembered from the 1970s.

George suggested a technique he had already used on a number of structures - spray the entire unit with flat black paint, then do the highlight colouring with an assortment of powders and PanPastels.  A grimy black base colour would have been preferable, but I went with what I had on hand and used a spray can of Testors flat black.  I masked off the shed at the base of the structure, leaving it in the original off-white shade.  The supports for the bins were obviously meant to be made of concrete, so they were painted with Floquil concrete before the powders came out.  Initially I was going to use powders on the roof sections, but decided that wasn't going to provide enough colour, so they were dry brushed with an assortment of silver, rust, black, and foundation colours by Floquil.  The balance of the structure was coloured by brushing on a variety of Bragdon weathering powders along with a few shades of PanPastels.  The base of the structure included some features that were meant to represent rocks and soil, so this area was brushed with white glue and an assortment of crushed materials were added.  A final application of powders tied everything together.  Now, if I could only find kits to represent the primary crusher and the pellet mill............!

Department of Corrections:
In our recent post of April 01 (we really weren't trying to fool you!) we covered our pair of PRR H25 open hoppers that were purchased from Gary Crowther.  I assumed that Gary had done the (tedious and painstaking) assembly, but it turns out that they had been painted by Dick Walker and assembled by some unremembered (but talented) modeller.  Anyway, thanks to all of the above, George and I now have an interesting pair of interchange models added to our fleets.

Here is the loader in all its Flat Black glory.  A lighter shade of weathered or grimy black would have been preferable.

A close up view of the front side of the structure.

This is the opposite (back) side of the loader.

In this view you can see two of the MDC ore cars I painted many years go.  To complete my Marmoraton Mining scene, I will need many more of these cars.