After abit of reading and coming across a interesting thread over on RMweb's weathering forum I stumbled across a bloke by usernamed Barry_O who has been doing weathering at Warley for 20 years, he uses ink and weathering powders to achieve his effects and I decided to pull out some inks I had from the large gamesworkshop multi-set from 10+ years ago and have a go.
The results have been quite outstanding and I hope it comes across in the photos well, what happens is the ink layers on and dulls the plastic look but by applying weathering powder ontop either dry or wet you can get the method of both a dirty workstained loco and muck building up as the weathering powder clumps to the wet areas of the ink. Also due to the ink if you go over with a cotton bud slightly damp or even dry you can get a polished metal look which both shines and looks like a engine from topshed but retains the gritty muck at the out edges and boiler tops. Also due to the method it seems to not require to be sealed in via varnish so the blotching effect doesn't even occur, Barry has made mention he has locos weathered this way from 20 year ago and still not required touching up.
By using this ink + weathering powder method I've been able to get the following results which has made me extremely happy with how its turned out compared to previous results.
Left side with cab numbers faded:
Right side with cab numbering and roof muck:
Actual dirty buffers!:
Coal bunker with leftover coal dust:
Dirty Backend
:
Tender Side:
Boiler top and general top of loco:
I think the results are pretty good compared to what has happened with the varnish and I'm damn happy its turned out so well.
On another note, anyone know where I could find emblem and br steam loco transfers to re-number the Ivatt 4mt? I did find one site which listed numbers but it referred to real size e.g. 2" 3" 4" 5" and 6" lettering, I'm not entirely sure just how big the numbering is on smokebox and cab sides on real locos and how that collates to 4mm. Unfortunately they didn't have any emblems so I'll have to find them elsewhere.