Cleaning/Washing trains before weathering them.

If you take the wheels off of it first, the only thing likely to be made of anything ferrous is the car weight in the floor.  There may be metal, but its mainly brass or zinc die cast.  I think a soap and water bath, followed by a rinse and a blow dry is the way to go.  Its gentle and its not like you're leaving it at the bottom of a lake for years.

Dont use alcohol, you're liable to strip something off or wreck the original finish on it (I know for a fact alcohol will eat Atlas paint). Windex windex is mostly water (which doesnt get around your corrosion concern) and also has alcohol in it.

I remove the trucks and weather them seperately. I seperate the car body where applicable from the chassis and wash them in the sink using Dawn brushed on with a soft good sized paint brush. A quick rinse and I let it dry or blow dry it with air.

Dawn is a great degreaser and just a little will do the job you want. If you have any doubts about the paint, as always, try it on a hidden spot first. Make sure you rinse very well and dry very, very well (trust me on that one...paint doesn’t stick to leftover Dawn suds and impatience with drying does not save time.) If you can, get it as dry as possible, then set it aside overnight before you repaint. You’re not cleaning out mud or whatever, so it should be an easier job than some forum members have had lately. Rust shouldn’t be a problem.

Please post pictures of your weathering attempts!

Dust them off with a stain brush, take apart and go for it. I'm now up to 2,041 weathered items.

81 albums on my link below, have fun!

Thank you to all!

Digital Subscribers can watch Jim Barrett's excellent video on how to properly clean your trains.

It took a while, but over the past 6 months I have been weathering some of my O gauge freight cars.

I frequently buy my O gauge cars used at train shows, so the first step is to them over and repair broken or missing parts. Sometimes replacement parts are available, but other times I have to fabricate them myself. I then completely disassemble them and make sure everything is glued in place. Boxcar doors are usually secured shut (unless I am modeling an open-door car), detail parts like brake wheels that were left unpainted by the manufacturer are painted to match the body, and the car's weight is checked. Then, everything is washed in preparation for weathering.

The wheel faces are brush painted various shades of brown, and the backs and axles are painted flat black to hide the shine. Truck sideframe are painted flat black and then highlighted with drybrushed orange rust and brown dirt. The couplers are carefully drybrushed brown. The car underframes are sprayed flat black followed by various short bursts of brown and rusty orange. The car bodies are Dullcoted and then weathered with oil paint washes and drybrushing to match prototype pictures. Finally, everything is reassembled.

It all takes time, but all that work is what I enjoy most. It is the process, just as much as the finished result, that makes it worthwhile. And, after having put 3-5 extra hours into a freight car