Acylic varnish nightmare...

So I came across a couple of old models I must have made about 20 yrs ago (now I feel old!), they were not amazing quality but worth salvaging, models were the airfix airfield emergency set, a fire truck and an ambulance, I figured if I could tart them up a bit they'd go nicely on my airfield section I'm planning for a corner of my railway layout.

Both models were very dusty but this cleaned off ok with a damp paintbrush, some parts were damaged but after a bit of gluing and filling they were ok. They were basically painted so my plan was to do some washes and drybrushing and see how they turned out.

First up was the ambulance which didn't turn out to bad, its not the best but from a distance looks good, my highlighting style is pretty extreme (too much time spent painting space marines!) but I like the effect. Originally the model was a light brown colour so I washed with a darker brown, then dry-brushed light brown, yellow, then white, in decreasing amounts. Finally the larger panels were repainted to get rid of wayward dry-brushing and the model was given a coat of matt varnish (Hornby spray varnish).

Next up was my fire truck, I followed a similar process but this time because the paint job wasn't very good a re-did the base coat with a gloss red (enamel paint) before washing and dry-brushing with acrylic (purely because of the various colours I had available). You wont be able to tell from the phot but it looked quite good!

Finally I sprayed with Hornby Acrylic varnish........ then to my horror all the paintwork blistered, almost instantly. This resulted in one ruined model which is now sin the bin!

I'm assuming that the acrylic varnish reacted with the enamel paint.

A bit of Google research and this problem is mentioned on a number of sites including here
 http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/53133-acrylic-varnish-over-enamel-paint/
 Seems the solvent in the acrylic varnish causes the reaction, chalk this one up to experience. Going forward I think I will avoid using enamel paints, my experience with painting miniatures using acrylics has definitely converted me, easier to clean, quicker to dry and I don't really like the high gloss finish that enamels can achieve anyway.

Ballasting model railway track

Its been a while but I've managed to make some progress on the railway track! I've ballasted the track. I spent some time researching the various methods people have used, there's a wealth of information on the internet, in the end this is how I did it:

Materials:
PVA glue
Sharp sand
Water
Large syringe
Teaspoon!

Step 1:
Poured the sand into position and brushed it into place, the sand was quite moist out of the bag so easy to form into place.

 

Step 2:
By the time all of the sand was in place it had dried out, I wanted it wet to help the glue soak though all of the grains so I gave it a good soaking with a fine mist, taking care not to blow it out of position!

 

Step 3:
Glued it in place. I used PVA glue watered down to a consistency of milk. I started by using a large syringe to drop the glue onto the wet sand but this was taking AGES so I used a teaspoon to carefully pour the glue into the centre of the track, whilst this was soaking in I used the syringe to add glue to the edges of the ballast

Step 4:
Let it dry, I left mine for days because I was busy doing other stuff but I think it was good and solid after 24hrs. A quick sweep to get rid of loose stuff and job done!

Thoughts

This was a very cheap method, I allready had sand and glue so to me it was free! If not you can pick up a bag of sharp sand for a few quid from a builders merchant and this will be enough to last you a lifetime!

I quite like the irregularity of grain size but purists out there may wish to sieve the sand first as there are some larger stones in the mix, I found though that most of the larger stones didn't bond as well as the sand and hence got swept away at the end.

Next step is to weather the tracks, my plan for this is to spray the lot (track and ballast) and maybe wash and highlight depending on how it ends up looking.