The panel lining miracle

Recently I learned about a Tamiya product that has been around for some time - Panel line Accent Colour (pictured below).

It is super-easy to apply and works by gently dabbing the fine brush attached to the lid of the bottle onto the recessed surface of your model and letting the liquid run along the lines by capillary action.

Military modellers, as usual, have been using it forever, but I was impressed with the results I had seen on Facebook among other NSWR modellers. After buying some having a go myself, I'm converted. It makes one of the stages of weathering so easy. Here's an example of just applying black panel liner to my 73. I haven't applied a dull or gloss coat at this stage, it's just straight out of the bottle and onto the model.

Before:

After:

I looked for other wagons to try it out on. After seeing photos of WAGR WGX open wagons running on western line trains during my era I decided to buy a pack from SDS at the Liverpool exhibition. I've seen some really good weathering effects by US modellers on yellow-liveried wagons, so I was also keen to replicate some of these techniques myself. I might yet invest in a WAGR WGV van, but for now I'm pretty well off for 65' and longer louvre vans, with 3x JLXs, 1x KLV and a VFX on the roster until the layout size grows.

Actually, that's only five wagons. Dangerously low I'd say.

Sorry--panel lining.

I've been having trouble recently getting the right consistency of acrylic washes. My mixture of 3 parts water, 1 part 100% isopropyl alcohol and 0.5 part paint has seen the paint want to stay together and form little droplets, rather than 'run' in a thin sheet across the model as I want it to. Until I've worked that out, the WGX appeared as a great candidate for panel lining. Here's before and after shots, just using dark brown:

You could stop there and just dullcote it to take away the shine, but to my eyes it needs a coat of powders to tone it down a littler further. We'll see.

Work also continues on the MFA, however for whatever reason I just can't get the urethane sides to glue together with CA glue. That project has frustrated me so much this week that I've boxed it up and set it aside for the time being. I've got just under two months until the removal van arrives to collect my things and take them to Sydney, which will pretty much stop my modelling activities for the rest of this year. I plan on using that time to complete the following jobs:

-finish weathering the NRY
-finish weathering the HGM's wheels
-panel lining and lightly weathering an MRC

It's a short list but between moving and looking for a railway room with living space attached, talking to banks etc., modelling time is at a premium.

Until next time!

Cheers,
Ben