Lined coach

Lined coach
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

I need some practise at lining rolling stock, so once the paint had hardened on the 16mm coach, some delineation between the cream and maroon areas was added. The steam railway wasn't as colourful as the modern version but there was much subtle work that had to be done the hard way by brushes and craftsman rather than sticky back plastic.

Following the instructions in Ian Rathbone's excellent new book on painting and lining models, I broke out the bow pen, loaded it with oldish matt black paint and had a go. With a little effort and a lot of concentration I drew a line between the two colours. My guide was a ruler from the Volkswagen Type 2 Society which is prefect for this sort of this as its "stepped" leaving a gap between the coach side and edge being lined . Anything flat against the side will encourage paint creep under it.

The line is 30cm long, around 1mm wide and tidy. The trick is to start and keep going. Slowly. Let the paint flow and try for a steady progression along the line. Thinner lines can be drawn quickly from my observations of people who are really good at this but I guess the trick is to judge how fast the paint feeds down the pen.

I left the black lines to dry for a while and then added orange ones using Precision GWR orange lining paint. This is gloss and despite it's age, at least 10 years, a bit thinner and faster flowing. I'm still happy with the results though.

The second side didn't go quite as well. I made a minor mistake with the masking and so the lines had to go very close to the edge of the mouldings. Working on a flat area is fine, on curves, not so. The finished job is OK for a garden railway but I'd be inclined to do it again on anything for exhibitions. Rathbone's book is very explicit that he doesn't get everything perfect first time and there is a lot of poking and pushing of paint and the methods to do this are explained. I used a sharpened match stick to tidy one line very successfully !

Pleased with my lining, I then had a crack at some lettering on another garden railway vehicle - a WD van. It's not perfect but again fits the "look" of the outdoor line. I used matt white after trying a couple of other pale colours which were just too thin and ran out of the pen.

As the book says - only practise makes perfect !