Land Rover Weathering

This is it. This will be the last post for a couple of weeks as I head back home to the UK for my holidays, and after the success of my weathering of the loading chute. I decided to have a go at the Land Rover.

My MCG Series 1 Landy as bought, nice and clean.

I do have fond memories of Land Rovers. My father used to run around in one when I was a child. He was a mechanic at Seacroft Garage in Mablethorpe, my home town, and would go out in it on call outs to broken down cars. Occasionally, he would take my brother and I with him. We’d ride in the cab or the back. Great memories. So I like to feature Land Rovers on as many of my layouts as I can. 

In 1:18 scale Minichamps is the best model on the market and also the most expensive. So I settled on the MCG version. Less detailed, but more reasonably priced, suitable for model railway scenery. 

The first thing to do, as with all my other pieces was to kill the model feel with Asphaltum.

Nice and clean before the job starts

After a scrub all over with Asphaltum the clean model feel is gone

Even if I was to just kill the plastic and metal I’d be happy. But Landys get muddy, so some splashes of mud are called for. It didn’t take much to create something that I’d be happy to place on the layout.

Mud around the wheel arches

Right now, it looks good enough to me.

As I’ve said before, weathering is subjective. Some people would want to cake a Land Rover in mud. Others would be happy with minimal road grime. I’m somewhere between the two. Perhaps I’ll add more later. But right now. That’s perfectly OK for me.

Weathering the Loader

 As you can expect. I couldn’t leave things alone, and had to add some weathering to the loading chute. Weathering is subjective. One person’s weathering masterpiece is another’s primitive daub. My work keeps me happy and lies somewhere between the two extremes.

A light weathering.

As with all my work, I start by giving the model a good scrub down and dry brushing with my favourite Asphaltum acrylic paint. It really kills the plastic feel of the models in my eyes. 

I’ve had this paint for years.

Then I scrubbed it on a bit darker in places, and added dabs of orange to suggest the beginnings of rusting. Finally because this would be a dusty, sandy place, there would be dust and sand collecting in crevices and on horizontal surfaces so I dry brushed some white on there too. I think it needs more of that and probably some sort of sandy colour too. One can get caught up in the minutiae of this process. But right now, this is good enough for me. Don’t you think?

That will do for now