Concrete

I've been helping a friend at my railway club, who is putting a French layout together for exhibiting. While modern French railways are certainly not high on my list of interests, I have done a couple of minor modelling projects for him, giving me the opportunity to try out a few new techniques and materials.

He wanted a large concrete paved area for a loco stabling. The basic concrete pieces were cut from a plastic display board material used for signs and presentations, several sheets of which I managed to rescue from the bin at work. It's quite thick to cut and shape but it also meant I was able to score in casting lines of the concrete where it would have been poured in sections. I also added some breaks and cracks with a sculpting tool.

Once cut to shape the peices were painted with a grey spray primer and left to harden. The intention was to paint the entire area with a lighter concreate colour but as the primer matches the ballast so well, this was shelved in favour of just washing and highlighting. The wash in the photos was a mixture of various black and brown oil paints, diluted with turpentine substitute. This was painted into the lines and cracks but doing this standing up and against the clock inevitably resulted in a little going over the edges. As I wiped this away it gave a very subtle shading effect, so I continued this across the board. What's nice about oil paints is that you can work them for several hours, so where I ended up with too much wash this was easily removed with a tissue dampened with the turpentine substitute. Like many washes the effect started to fade slightly as it dried, so I,m looking forward to going back to the club this week and see how it looks. Then it will be time to add the ballast and highlights.