Q. You do great freight cars and buildings. Do you have a beautiful train layout too?
A. Unfortunately not. I'm an apartment dweller for the time being. But someday I will have one.
Q. Can you show me how to weather a freight car the way you do?
A. I doubt it. This isn't so much weathering as it is painting.
I am not simply applying some filth-in-a-bottle rust solution.
The end results that you see on here take days of layered hand-painting.
Artistic talent is not conveyed in a How To article the way generic weathering is.
You wouldn't walk up to the guy in the Mall painting portraits from snapshots
and say: "Wow..... beautiful work! Can you show me how to do that?"
Q. Aren't you being stuck up when you cop out like that?
A. It does sound that way to a lot of people. I'd just rather not be a mentor.
Besides, if one is going to raise the bar - must they offer you a ladder afterwards?
When I get tired of eBay selling, I will most likely write a book on my painting techniques.
Q. Can you at least tell me what you paint and weather with?
A. Sure. Polly-S (not Polly Scale) military and fantasy colors.
Humbrol, Testors, Pactra, and certain Floquil enamel paint.
Much of that bottled model paint was purchased in the 1980's.
I've also used artists tube acrylic paint - but not oils or gouache.
I use pastel sticks ground into powder. But no airbrush whatsoever.
Everything is painted by hand, except for some spray paint base coats.
Q. How do you make the graffiti on your freight cars?
A. I digitally photograph the real thing up close.
Then on my computer, I edit and clean the image.
Finally, I reduce the image and print it out as a decal. In most cases,
I touch up the decal with some hand painting once it's on the model.
Signs on the buildings were either real or computer generated and made as decals.
Q. Your model photos sometimes look enhanced. Are those backgrounds digitally added?
A. In the recent Galleries - yes. I got tired of shooting the model outside, only to have
the real-life background be out of focus due to the depth-of-field restrictions.
Now, I add in various real local background shots via Photoshop.
Q. How long have you been doing model trains like this?
A. Well... I just started weathering HO freight cars in the Fall of 2003.
But I have been building and painting models since the late 1960's.
Q. Will you weather an HO freight car for me on commission?
A. No, I prefer to do just cars that I like, and auction them off.
Q. Would you do an HO weathered building for me on commission?
A. No. For the same reason as above.
Q. Would you do a custom kitbashed HO building for me on commission?
A. Probably not. But I wouldn't say never if the price is good.
Q. Do you do models in other scales besides HO?
A. For selling purposes - only HO. I do N scale for myself.
Q. Will you ever put photos of your N scale work on here?
A. Once I redesign my website, there will be a small N Scale section .
Q. Will you ever do an HO steam engine or a diesel for sale?
A. Highly unlikely. There are actually things I cannot do as well as I'd like.
