Weathering Wood Walkways

Example of a weathered wood roofwalk.  These were already weathering heavily in the early 1970's when this photo was taken
Cropped from an image I found on Facebook of a 40' boxcar being scrapped.  You can see the heavy weathering on the roof and roofwalk.

Wood roofwalks by the early 1980s were not well maintained.  Cars that kept them often had rotten wood, missing planks, etc.  Rooftop photos from the period show a lot of weathered wood, often with little paint left after sometimes decades of exposure to the elements.  

While I haven't gotten to the point of removing boards (yet), I am trying to represent paint failure and lack of maintenance.  A mix of greys, browns and blacks with a bit of wood colour in the mix gives some variety to the wood roofwalks.  I tried to vary the level of weathering between boards and cars so there wasn't any uniformity to the weathering patterns.  This is quick work, literally taking 5 minutes per car to get the roofwalks done.  

A few of the paint colours used on the roofwalks
My paint palette.  I randomly mixed various colours to get variations in the tones.  I sometimes applied heavy coats, other times dry brushed the individual boards.  





Further weathering will tone down any "bright" boards relative to the rooftops.  It is a process involving multiple layers of paint and Pan Pastels, depending on the car.  Some will only be airbrushed, others only Pan Pastel will be applied, while some will have both.  No two cars alike.  



 

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