Supercrud

This Keershaw tie crane from Railway Express received a judicious application of crud. The neat thing about using Rustall as the bonding agent for the chalk is that you can selectively apply the Rustall and drown the model in chalk dust, but it will only bond to those areas that are wet. After the Rustall is dry, simply brush away the excess. Additional Rustall can be applied without chalk in other selected areas for more subtle effects; in this case, the crane arms were not hit with the chalk treatment. The model also benefited from a replacement roof made from thin sheet brass. By the way, to simulate the used ties, I squeezed them with a needle-nose pliers to create the tie plate indentations, poked them with a pin where spikes used to be, then added a touch of Rustall to the depressions.

Image specs: This image was captured with a Canon 20D digital SLR.

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