I will weather the engine, but first will paint the rods. This is a Sunset/3rd Rail engine and has some pretty tiny and delicate parts and screws. So, maybe I'll brush them with alcohol or something else that will evaporate. They are not shiny, so I don't have to get over that obstacle, and I am not sure whether to brush paint all of them or airbrush them and then paint accents.
Brushing them with Neolube sounds like it might work better than black paint, thanks for the suggestion, Gilly. Can you apply light grey paint over Neolube after the Neolube is well dried?
I'm not looking for just-shopped appearance, but would like to end up with rods that look like typical in-service ATSF rods -- grease flies when the engine is working, but you can see that, under it, there is paint. Normally, most Santa Fe steam locomotives were not allowed to get as dirty as some other railroads, but, in places where water was scarce, washing was done less often and engines that stayed on those territories were "more heavily weathered".
By the way, Stan Kistler recalls that the light grey accents were only that color when new -- the grease stained them with a yellowish film.
