Painting/Staining Railroad Ties

[dtommy]

I will be hand laying track (code 83) for the first time. What should I use to color the ties? Should I use an oil-based stain or acrylic stains/paints? It's going to be a rural branch line w/weed-covered sidings.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!!

Tom C.

[rebel]

Use an AI wash, you can get ink in many colors, on the few wood tie projects I have done, I fiqued if I made it out of wood, I would like to retain the carihture of the wood, otherwize, why bother.

[mecrr]

I would recommend brown and black shoe dye and denatured alcohol. Wide variety of colors possible from newly creosoted to worn - abandoned sidings. Also, more durable than I/A which always looks like I/A IMHO.
David

[Night Train]

I had to hand lay HO track for a customer once, many years ago. I bought pre-stained ties, I think they were from Campbell. These are probably not available now - but here's the process if you have wood ties.

I like to stain the raw wood ties with an oil-based stain like Maple. It dries overnight and doesn't raise the grain.
Mix up a jar full of stain and thinner and drop the ties in, let them soak a while and put them on newspaper to dry. When dry I glad them to the roadbed using white glue. Years ago I used a tie spacing jig that was available at the time but now you can just place them by hand. Put weights on the ties until the glue dries.

Next, I sanded the tops of the ties until all the ties were at the height of the lowest tie. Then I restrained the tie tops and laid the pre-painted rail.

There's a good tutorial at - http://prsl.ch/twiki/bin/view/MRR/TrackWork - just forget the HOn30 part.

[bparrish]

Consider dark walnut aniline dye. It is a powdered coal substance that dissolves in any alcohol. Available from most art supplies. Mix it as dark as you want it and looks just like creosote.

see ya
Bob

[dtommy]

Bob, Dave, David, and Rebel:

Thank you for the suggestions! Dave, thank you for the link!

Very much appreciated!

Tom C.

[jbvb]

The way I learned to hand-lay involved gluing the ties in place first. I use the piano-key jig & masking tape technique to apply them because when I don't, I get spacing that looks bad. A branch would normally have ties spaced farther apart than a main line, and possibly more randomly depending on the era. Anyway, I use white glue and when that's dry, I sand as Dave recommends. Then I brush on an oil-based stain. What's up in the attic is Minwax Dark Walnut, because my B&M hasn't had it's maintenance budget gutted, but I come back and paint a few ties here and there with Ebony to look like recent replacements. Then I ballast and finally lay the rail.

[dtommy]

Again, I want to thank everyone for the suggestions!

I thought I had some leftover maple stain from a previous woodworking project. I rummaged through the old cans of stain and found none.
I went by my wife's craft paint rack and discovered a bottle of light oak acrylic stain. Hmmm, no maple stain and this acrylic stain is sitting right here not be using. Instead of running out to the hardware store, I nabbed my wife's bottle of acrylic stain and headed up to the layout room.

I tried an AI wash, but the ties still looked too pale. I then applied the light oak stain and the ties looked better, but still too light. I added just a bit of Mars Black acrylic paint and isopropyl alcohol to thin it. I really liked the results. I went ahead and made a tie spacing jig. I tried spacing the ties by hand, but it looked really bad. Here's a photo of my results. The diorama will feature my Fos Scale Yard Office kit I built last fall.

Freshly stained ties and tie jig.

100_0616.JPG (235.63 KiB) Viewed 1253 times

Ties glued to diorama base.

100_0617.JPG (203.21 KiB) Viewed 1253 times

Tom C.

[DarkTerritory]

Good Job, Tommy. Spacing looks like lightly used industrial track, good call.

[rebel]

Looking good!!!!!! The reason I like AI is it dose not raise the grain, I have a batch that is almost black. Also sometimes if I want a more opaque color I will use shoe dye in the alcohol instead of ink. Just for future reference,