Howard Zane : Pastel Weathering A Locomotive Start to Finish 

Folks, Bill did an excellent job on his K2 and then some! I did most of my weathering with an airbrush, but pastels are a challenge. Actually, I did another or a third loco....just forgot!. Forrest Nace sold me a really loused up, but quite rare PFM PL&E A2 Berkshire from 1960. I was able to change a miserable paint finish to something almost acceptable. But a loco of this quality should go to a really good custom painter. After all of my California O scale buildings finally leave here, with Al and Andre's help, my shop will be completely reorganized and with a new compressor and rebuilt airbrushes. This will be for my newly scratch-built rolling stock inventory. Both of these fellows will have a major mess of parts bestowed up them as at soon to be age 86 and there are just not enough years left for me to use anywhere near what has been accumulated over the decades. Also Bill's K2 looked really nice, but I'd prefer the version with the smaller tender or VC12. Otherwise, this K2 is difficult to distinguish from a PFM or Key K3. Also, I plan on again painting brass locos again, but not for public consumption. I really love airbrushing brass locos, but i still may keep on teaching myself pastel techniques for weathering.

Thank you for a great video. Didn't realize pastels would be so effective

Pan pastels can be applied very effectively--sometimes moreso than brushes--with the small dense sponges women use for make-up. I have always preferred pastels and chalks; airbrush weathering looks too much like it was painted on. The graphite idea is brilliant.

That was a great lesson. I need to give this a try. Are the pan pastels any particular manufactured brand? The water stains is a valuable note and the graphite makes the loco pop for sure. Thank you Howard!

I'm definitely going to try the graphite on my new NP Q-3 I finished repainting...

👍👍👍👍👍👍😊😊

Amazing!

He’s extremely talented, would definitely love to see his layout and talk to him about Model Railroading

WAY COOL!!!! Thanks Howard and Al!!! Dave

And you are great at what you do and give excellent pointers

Looks terrific, never thought about using powered graphite. May I ask what is the difference between pan pastels and powered chalks?

Keep up the good work

This is the best weathering I've found anywhere. After you see something done by hand with pastels you just can't look at airbrushing the same way. The pastels get the lime and rust and soot and then with airbrushing it's like "oh thats the ticket, that's beautiful" and they hold it up and it's just slightly less glossy 😅

Al, Thanks for doing these videos. Always enjoy learning from Howard, been looking to him for many years and always appreciate the knowledge he shares in the hobby

Al, this is historic video. This will be viewed repeatedly, forever. What a great job of weathering and he claims he’s learning. Thanks for shooting this. So he doesn’t use a dullcoat over the pastels or graphite at all?

Howard Zane is such a pleasure to watch