jeff train

The FGE car on the left shows the out-of-the-box shiny wheels and Accu-mate couplers. The MEC car on the right is an Atlas car that's had its truck sideframes and wheels painted Weathered Black and a new Kadee coupler installed.

 I'm getting the layout ready for an operating session for our local operating group later this month. As I was staging a few trains I realized several of the cars had Accumate couplers. These two-piece plastic couplers don't uncouple easily enough and I usually replace them with Kadees. 
The "ready-to-run" Atlas and Accurail cars also include unpainted - very shiny - silver wheels. 

I've found the Kadee couplers (right) are much more reliable than the Accumate couplers (left).

Since replacing the couplers meant removing the trucks to get to the coupler box cover, I went ahead and painted the wheels and the truck side frames at the same time. 
Painting the trucks is the first step in weathering any car. I got extra motivated and did an initial coat of weathering on one or two cars - the yellow cars will be weathered at some point in the future. 

I even managed to weather a few of these cars - including this Atlas B&O hopper.

In the end I spent some time last night and this morning and got the couplers replaced and wheel sets painted on about 15 cars. 
Even without the "full" weathering treatment they look a lot better!

George Dimond, courtesy Central Vermont Railway Historical Society

 For many years model railroaders were told to paint steam locomotives "Grimy Black" - which is basically a flat, dark gray.  In addition, model railroaders started weathering steam locomotives to appear so old, dingy, and poorly maintained that they looked like they were on the verge of falling apart. 
Supposedly this made the models look better in the low light levels typical of most model railroads - and all that weathering supposedly made the details "stand out." Really, it was another example of the extreme weathering - to the point of caricature - that gripped the hobby in the 1950s and still hasn't let up in some quarters. 
Studying prototype pictures, at least of the Central Vermont, shows the shop and road crews took great pride in their iron steeds, and the locomotives showed a hard-working, but well maintained appearance even in the last few years of steam. 
This shot shows 2-10-4 no. 707 arriving in White River Junction in September 1953. By this point she's the last of her class in service and would soon be relegated to standby duties out of White River Jct. She may be dusty and soot covered in this photo, and appears to have been working hard out of the road, but she's most definitely not gray. 
An even better example is the lead image of 4-8-2 no. 600 being readied for another run at the White River engine terminal. In March, 1954 she's not only not gray or "Grimy Black," she's shiny!
The lesson here is to feel free to paint your steamers black, and to take it easy on the weathering. 
If you find there's not enough light in the layout room then consider adding more lighting to your layout instead of lightening your locomotives. 

After assembling the basic walls, installing the doors and windows, and adding the sub roof panels, I turned my attention to the foundation. This building will sit alongside the mill stream, meaning more of the foundation will be exposed on one side and along the rear than in the front. The kit includes a lot of small plaster blocks for the foundation. To make installing them easier I added a wall of 3/64� basswood sheet glued to the inside of the bracing and extending the full height of the foundation. Then I used a selection of the Hunterline stains (Medium Brown, Sepia Brown, Blue Gray, and Driftwood) to color the individual stone blocks. This was hardly scientific; my main goal was to make the coloration subtle and somewhat varied by staining each stone with the �base� of one color, and then adding variety by dabbing on the other stains to each stone.
Then it was simply a matter of gluing the individual stones to that bass wood foundation subwall.

Building rolling stock is perhaps my favorite part of the hobby. Since I profess to like it so much, you shouldn�t be surprised that I think building, painting and decaling a single-color boxcar should not be that much of a challenge. Then I ran into this project � a Missouri Pacific 10-6� 40-foot boxcar.
The origin is one of the Sunshine Models doorprizes from the Naperville Railroad Prototype Modelers shows Martin and Trish Lofton sponsored for years.  Each year, the presenters and attendees staying at the show hotel were presented with a door prize � some are loads, and one year we got a complete flat car, but most have been an assortment of resin details (doors, ends, etc . . .) to convert an injection molded plastic car to some specific prototype or another. I have ten or so of these and they all produce some pretty neat and unusual transition era freight cars.
I constructed this freight car while we were building our present house, so it's the most recent freight car I've built.
The building process went remarkably well.  The door prize parts were installed on an InterMountain 10�-6� AAR boxcar, and I even replaced most of the Intermountain details (ladders, brake rigging and the like) with parts from Detail Associates.  Then I rearranged the brake components to match the prototype (which differed from the stock Intermountain arrangement and fashioned the underbody piping from brass wire.
I photographed the finished, but unpainted car and then sprayed the model with Polly Scale acrylic paint.  Then, like usual, I gave the model a clear gloss coat and applied the decals. I finished decaling and applied the final clear flat overcoat.  I have never had decals silver (leave visible film) as badly as these did. I suspect the issue was the Testors Acryl clear finishes I used. It was the first time I tried using this stuff, and found it left a visible, white, streaky haze. Perhaps I got an old bottle of the stuff.
What a mess.
I put the model aside and built, and rebuilt, the layout.
After all the issues I've been having with the Berry Machine kit, I figured a break to build a freight car was just what the doctor ordered. So I opened the box with the stash of freight cars and guess which one was the first one to greet me?
Great, another problem child!
I studied the model, and figured the basic car was worth the effort to strip and refinish it.  But recently I�d been reading in FineScale Modeler about using Future Floor finish as a decal clear coating. I have some of the stuff, so I figured I had nothing to loose.  If it worked, great, if not, it was just one more layer to strip. I lightly brushed a coat of Future on the sides and left it to dry overnight.  This next morning the silvering had all but disappeared - although the car still had some streaking, but I think that will be easy to hide with some weathering. Once the model is weathered, I'll post a follow up. In the meantime, I think I'll use Future to do the decals on my next rolling stock model.