I wonder if it is worth it to take a few days, and just paint track before I lay it down? I REALLY like the look of your turn out traction fan. Obviously you know how to mix paints to get the right look as well
Bigfoot21075;
That depends on how important it is to you, personally, that your track look realistic. You are ,of course, the only one who can decide that, for your railroad.
Painting track can be done several ways. Some methods make track look more realistic than others, but any of them is likely to be better looking than bare plastic track. The more realistic effects you want, the longer it will take.
What brand, & type, of track are you using? How much of it do you have to paint?
If you're using flex, or sectional, (non-roadbed) track, the simple way to improve its looks is to take it outside and spray paint the entire pieces of track, ties and rails, a rust brown color. I use Rustoleum, or Krylon, flat brown primer. These are available at Walmart, Home Depot, & Lowes. Spray cans discharge lots of paint in a big hurry! Keep the can moving well beyond the ends of the track. Keep the can at least 18" away from the track, and paint in several light coats, rather that one heavy coat. The whole point is to not get too much paint on the track and have the paint run. For many modelers, this spray painting is enough by itself. Others, like me, take it further, but I often start by spray painting my track. Of course, an airbrush could also be used instead of a spray can.
Roadbed tracks, like "Kato Unitrack", or "Bachmann EZ-Track", present some possible extra challenge, because the "ballast" piece is permanently attached to the track, which makes it very difficult to paint the track without also painting the ballast. Major & tedious masking would be needed, unless you can remove the ballast piece from the track. Atlas "True Track" has this capability, I think. I've heard that "True Track" is simply old fashioned Atlas sectional track, with a roadbed piece stuck underneath it. I don't use roadbed track, but if I did, I would just spray the ballast the same rust brown as the ties & rails, to start with.
Once you have the spray paint on, and thoroughly dry, (overnight is best) you can add more weathering effects if you want to. If you spray painted Kato, or Bachmann roadbed track, including the ballast, now is a good time to brush paint some gray onto the ballast. This doesn't need to cover every last bit of the rust brown color. A very little bit of that brown, showing through the gray, can pass for dirt.
I use flex track, specifically Micro Engineering's code 55, N-scale flex. Since my ballast is the traditional loose type, I don't need to paint a plastic ballast piece, and then re-paint it. I hand brush the ties with a dull brown color (Tamiya flat brown with about 10% of their "flat base" added) Then the rails , with an eyeball mix of mostly flat brown, a little orange, and a little flat base. I also thin my "Tie color" and "Rail color" mixtures with alcohol. (Tamiya is an alcohol-based model paint.) You can use any decent brand of model paint. Tamiya is just my favorite brand.
Since the mixing is by looks, try mixing a brush full of each color on a scrap piece of plastic,( I find the plastic trays from "Smart Ones" frozen diet meals make excellent "artist's pallets" ) until it looks like railroad ties, or rails. I sometimes go even further on track that is right up front, and can be closely examined. I use pastel chalks to add things like dust, dirt, rust, oil stains, & such. I dip an artist's brush in water, drag the bristles along the stick of chalk, and "paint" the water/chalk mixture onto the track. I have also used a thin wash of ink to add further weathering to the track.
Now there is no reason to go any further with this track painting business than you want to. You may be quite pleased with just the spray painting, or go one, two, or more steps beyond. That's entirely up to you. I find painting track, even by hand, goes pretty quickly. Real rails & ties are not all the same color, and there is no need for any sort of "artistic perfection" in track painting. The end result simply needs to look more like real track than the shiny plastic ties, & shiny silver rails, of commercial model track.
By the way, the chalk weathering techniques that work for track, also work for other things around the railroad. The freight cars in the photos were "painted" with chalks, right over their factory paint jobs.
Good Luck & Have Fun;
Traction Fan 🙂
