Red Oak Series: Weathering N scale locomotives

White painted cab-unit style diesel locomotive sitting on a wood block.

Three colors of paint, an airbrush, and a couple of hours is all MRVP’s David Popp needed to enhance three different types of N scale diesel locomotives with realistic weathering effects. In this video, David shows the paints and airbrushing techniques required to give the Red Oak N scale units, or practically any other diesel […]

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Red Oak Series: Weathering freight cars

Fingers hold a small scale model boxcar.

Now that scenes on Model Railroader magazine’s 3 x 7-foot N scale Red Oak layout are nearly compete, MR associate editor Eric White turns his attention to enhancing the rolling stock with realistic weathering effects. In this video, Eric shares his techniques for applying weathering powders on both dark and light-colored freight cars. […]

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Olympia Logging Series: Part 30 – Steam locomotive weathering

Close view of a steam locomotive's top side.

While we’ve addressed how to weather modern diesel locomotives in other MRVP videos, David Popp takes on the challenge of giving the Olympia Logging Co. steam locomotives an aged appearance. Follow along as he demonstrates how to use an airbrush to apply various paint color effects — all without impacting the performance of our layout […]

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Olympia Logging Series: Part 12 – Backdrop painting

Hand holding airbrush painting a back drop.

Using little more than a cardstock template and a couple paint colors, artist Jay Smith shows viewers just how quick and easy it is to add a realistic pine forest treeline to MRVP’s On30 Olympia Logging Co. layout. Jay used his favorite internal mix airbrush to apply the paint, but his simply technique for making […]

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