Weahering I agree. If you don't try, you'll never know. I'm sure you probably have some old car around that you can practice on. Here are a few pictures. I don't go into real heavy weathering, but I don't like squeaky clean cars either. How often do you see clean equipment on the rails. These were done using chalks for the black streaking down from the roof, and I will usually give a light dusting of "mud" along the lower part of the equipment with an air brush. When I am done I will over spray the cars or locomotives with dullcoat to seal the car. These were done over 20 years ago. It acrually only takes a few monutes to do one.
That is a problem back in the days of steam. The soot has a tendency to wash down from the roofs and streak the sides of the cars.
I trialled using a program called switch list for the future layout and it is excellent basically how it works is you add all your industries, cars, loads, yards and interchange tracks and the program develops switch lists for how many trains you want to operate. Took a little time to work out but once I was able to generate switch lists I could see how the operating sessions would go. Really excited about putting it into operation once the layout is built. The beauty is as I purchase cars I can add them straight to the system and allocate loads etc.
I have purchase some second hand Atlas box cars and they have plastic wheels what are the best wheels to replace these with and what size?
I have replaced all of the wheels on my rolling stock, mostly with Kadee wheels. In more recent years, I believe that lifelike has also brought metal wheels on the market that I have also used with great results. While working on my layout expansion, I found out that I was just a quarter of an inch out of level while testing the track work and had freight cars rolling all over the place until it was brought back to level. http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?149651-Layout-Expansion
I had always used Kadee wheels/trucks in the past, but I have moved towards the proto 87 standard wheels like the Athearn Genesis ones.
Intermountain wheels is the other brand that I couldn't remember the name of. I have had very good luck with them too, costing less than the Kadees.
I prefer Intermountain for the following reasons: 1: they are the least expensive at my lhs 2: the P2K wheels have had quality control issues in recent years. 3: the blackening on KD wheels comes off and mucks up rail and frankly doesn't look that good in the first place. 4: I find IM to fit in any truck I put them in with the least fuss of the brands listed.
I agree there are better wheels than kadee now, but I remember Matt (stickymonk) spinning kadees in my lathe and polishing the treads. They looked so much better and of course stayed cleaner. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Intermountain is what I have been using lately. Couldn't remember the name. I have had the majority of my rolling stock for over 20 years and Intermountain wasn't available back then. I do like them a lot.
Well he had paid a quarter deposit and agreed to forfeit so I let GM off the hook it is now back on eBay
