Sunday, September 03, 2006

Locomotive crew


Locomotive crew
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
All model railway locomotives must have a crew on the footplate. I don’t care whether there are any people on the rest of the model, bare footplates are wrong. Actually bare footplates, bridges and cockpits are wrong but I’m only concerned with railways here.

After a bit (OK, a lot) of digging in the maturing cupboard I extracted this Nu-cast whitemetal crew from a box of O gauge stuff. Just the job to man the Merchant Navy. The cab will cover their shortcomings as neither is exactly the greatest example of the figure sculptors art !

Handily, both figures have pegs on one foot so they can be supported in a big blob of Blu-Tack for painting. I use a mix of greys and grey-blues with off white (Humbrol 147) for the shirts. The flesh colour is Revell as it looks (to me) more natural than the Humbrol equivalent.

Once the basic painting is properly dry, the figure is washed with matt black to highlight the crevasses. This is a really weak mix to give a subtle effect. Since the crew would be pretty grimy from coal dust and general footplate grime the models mustn’t be pristine. All except their boots which are properly shiny thanks to some satin paint.

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