Detail those cars!

Very nice Ben.

Tom

Cool!  Great looking upgrade...might have to try on my own spot car.

I like it !

Yes, taking a little time can make a huge difference. Looks good adding details. I tend to get a little carried away. This is a before and after shot.

No image?

Michael, I love what you did to the tanker! As a newbie, I was wondering why more owners don't make their trains more realistic with rust and even graffiti? Almost every video I see of O gauge I see, looks as if the cars came straight out of the box and onto the tracks. However, I've enjoyed YouTube videos of HO trains where they spend hours making the cars weathered looking. In fact, I have even sent photos of graffiti covered box cars and sent them to an HO friend of mine. Why the difference?

When people are spending nearly $100 on a freight car, they won't be in the mood to weather them.

Thanks fpeter3, for the kind words. To answer your question maybe it’s the price of the rolling stock or the lack of skill. Don’t get me wrong most of my rolling stock looks new out of the box. It’s hard to take that leap in changing a items overall looks. I cannot speak for anybody but myself I enjoy weathering most items.

I too like weathering on rail cars. It's just more realistic tell see a dusty /dirty car rolling down the main line. But $100 cars, I might want to resell those in the future. Here's a look at a few cars I weathered.  None of these cost me more than  $25, the NW2 I bought for $50 from a fellow club member.

Bill they look great, I totally agree when weathering the cars have to be bought at the right price. It’s still an expensive endeavor but it helps when the car are the right price. The tea cup slag and gondola are great looking.

Thank you. The gondola was made from 2 $3 O27 cars. I cut them longitudinally at the fish belly stiffener.  Glued them together to make a car a scale 10 feet wide,  added diecast trucks for proper weight then painted it. I made the decals on white decal sheet using the simple Word program. Harbor Freight truck tire weights were added to bring the car up to NMRA standards. Paint and weathering finished the job.

I posted a thread about couple of years ago on the weathering process. CHECK out "REALISTIC WEATHERING OF STEEL MILL CARS ".

Sorry to revive a year-old thread, but this is a bit relevant to what I'm currently doing.

I recently resurrected my Lionel stuff for my new granddaughter.  My first project was getting my #60 trolley back in shape.  It had been stored in a non-damp environment, so no rust.  It looked pretty good actually, but I wanted it to look perfect (I'll save the stuff for the electro-mechanical restore for another time).  I see that nice ones are selling on ebay for around $100.  Mine looks as good as those.  However, by restoring the lettering on the side, will I diminish the value?  Since I have no intention on selling it, this is more a theoretical question than anything else.

Thanks in advance.