Weathering

Everything we have is weathered, i.e. the layout, the rolling stock, and the motive power. I model the steam era of the early to mid 1950s.

Real is my deal!!!

Just starting out on weathering. Just the basics -- hitting equipment with a light to heavy coating of "dust" Floquil (will switch to Tru-Color when I run out). Dusting is interesting in that you don't see the effects when you're weathering, so sometimes you have to step back from it, but here's a good comparison. The trailing unit is one I just recently picked up while the lead unit is one I weathered and didn't even realize I had weathered it that much.

These C44-9W's were weathered at the same time as the C40-8 above.

There are definitely some folks here that do some very nice weathering and I think those look very nice and very realistic. Really difficult to tell they are not the real thing. However, I am not one of those folks, so I have nothing that is weathered. I actually like the new, nice and clean look and will probably stick with that for a while. Maybe weathering will be in the cards someday, but not for a while yet.

Funny thing about weathering (I do it, certainly, or paint entire project steamers or project diesel running gear in a "weathered black" for a certain quick-and-easy weathered effect): many go all ballistic over it (why?), but when I put a weathered piece of rolling stock on a sale table at a train show, it is almost always the first to get comments and the first to be sold. On our (now defunct) modular layout my dirtied-up locos always drew the most compliments and "crowds". Even a minimalist approach - like the running gear on a clean, early-career  steamlined Dreyfuss Hudson - is correct and enhancing. 

I haven't tried to sell a weathered loco yet, but I imagine that the response will be favorable, too. If ever.

Weathering - decently done, of course - is not "messing up a paint job"; it is part of the paint job. I should do it more.