Work on the Trolley

I've been feeling rather lousy the past few days....  maybe COVID again or maybe a cold with all the symptoms that go with each...  so I've been doing a little work on the trolley between naps.  It's been raining steadily most of this time so I've been stuck inside the house anyway.  This allowed me a bit of time to go back to working on my large scale trolley for our garden railroad. 

The new motor block that I added to the trolley about a month ago is slightly taller than the original motor block which changes the appearance of this trolley.  Even before adding this motor block, I was never all that happy with the way the trolley appeared to just teeter on the four wheels near the center of the trolley.  I felt like it looked like the trolley was set upon an upside-down triangle.  Raising the body of the trolley up slightly to fit this new motor block made this odd look even more noticeable.  I figured that adding some skirting to the underside of the body might help minimize this odd teetering-on-the-apex-of-a-triangle look.

For this first photo, I should have laid the trolley on a white towel so it would be easier to see what has been bothering me.  Regardless, here is a photo of the trolley before I attempted to resolve this appearance problem...

My first thought was to just add skirting from the front steps to the rear steps straight across the whole side of the trolley.  This looked a bit too boxy to me though.  I also didn't like that this skirting now covered all of the side-frame detail.  

I chose to contour this new skirting to allow access to the side-frames and the wheels.  This is a better solution...  (but still not exactly the way I want it)...

I weathered the side-frames and then realized that the skirting looks odd being solid black so I added some light weathering to this new skirting...

The weathering helped significantly but the skirting is still looking too black to me so I think maybe I need to repaint the skirting and then weather it again.  I might change the shape of the skirting too.  For the new paint job, I'll tone down the black leaning toward a dark charcoal.  Or, maybe I need to paint this skirting red like on the body of the trolley?  It would be very difficult to match the red so I should probably just stick to toning down the black toward dark charcoal and then weather it again.  

I like this new skirting...  it is definitely a step in the right direction.  It has added some bulk and apparent weight to the lower part of the body of the trolley but now I need to get the shades of paint just right...   and maybe re-shape the skirting....

UPDATE:  7:00pm, August 10th - I made the changes I mentioned above after watching the rest of the Olympics for today and now I'm satisfied with the results.

First, I ended up cutting the skirting a bit.  Mostly, I changed the angle of the cut at the side-frames making the side-frames more visible with the angles of the cuts mirroring the angles on the side-frames.  That made a huge difference!

Then I toned down the black paint on the skirting to a dark charcoal.  After getting the right tone of paint, I let it dry.  I quickly added some weathering powders to show dirt, water stains and rust in select areas.  

That skirting now looks like it was there forever!

Here is a closer look at the side-frames next to the new skirting.  They now match quite well!

Next, I want to tackle doing something to the roof.  Everything is the same color on the roof like it was freshly painted with a semi-gloss paint and the color just doesn't seem right to me.  It is too...   hmmm...  fake looking?  Or, too toy-like?  I want to lose that little bit of shine that it currently has and I want to make the wood plank walkways on top of the roof appear more like worn wood.  I'll need to think about how to accomplish this though. 

At first I was thinking I wanted to change the color of the roof but now I'm not so sure.  I think I should either leave it the same color or change it to a darker reddish-brown (since the trolley has a wide red stripe on its sides) while making the wood plank walkways look more like natural wood.  I think I need to do some research and look at photos first.  

The skirting is done though and I definitely accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by adding this skirting so that is good.  It looks far better now than it did in the photos at the top half of this blog entry!