Sandy Shores - Weathering Trials

Sadly I couldn't start on the fiddle yard yesterday, so all I managed to do was to glue down the polystyrene on the beach, and also add a concrete plinth (out of DAS clay) to the underside of the sunken pillbox:

I also marked out the pathway that meanders its way around the dunes..

...which was then carved out:

Since I couldn't start work on the fiddleyard, my attention turned to more experimentation. As the headshunt trestle needs to be painted before I can do the scenery on the beach, it was a prime target. Now I've never done anything like this before, so this was all new to me. A while back I bought some Model Color water based acrylic paints (which was supposed to be used for painting wagons, but I haven't got around to that yet). Here's what I started out with - the landward leg of the trestle:

And this is what it ended up as! I'm pretty pleased with the results, it's hard to take photos that show the true colours, but it has a grey appearance which suggests old and sunbleached oak. I've left an existing trestle underneath to show the changes.

Pleased with the result, I set about work on the remaining trestles. Except, for some reason the results aren't quite as good - they are too brown and not the weathered grey I had managed to capture on my first attempt. Must be beginners luck! You can see the difference below.

It's not bad, and I'm still happy with it, but it's too brown in comparison to the grey it should be. Which is weird because I thought I used similar techniques for both. Very odd. Oh well.

Still, at least I know that I don't need to be afraid of trying new things out, and I can go ahead and start painting the other wooden structures on the layout.

Update:

The little wooden jetty has had the same treatment done, as well as the headshunt trestle deck! The handrails on the latter are temporary, and will be changed when make some better ones...