I am as guilty as the next guy on probably overdoing it a bit, but I am getting better at not letting "the little guy inside my head" get the better of me.  One of the things I find that helps keep me in check is that, along with the build date, any other dates on the car that indicate repaints, cleaning, etc, in relation to my layout year have really made me stop and think how I want to approach that particular job.  This simple little respect to the detail of the car (and I am by no means a rivet counter!!!) has stopped many a rust bucket in it's tracks...(no pun intended, that just came out of the fingertips straightaway...!)

The MStL box has a build date of 10-44, but shows CLN 7-64.  As much as I would have liked to do this up to a more grungy degree, the fact that the date is only a few months before my early fall date of the layout had me just dust it up enough to show it's been roaming the rails since it was last serviced.  This approach and being honest with ones self works for me.  

Granted, it's no crime to have a few here and there that really set the bar "low" if you will.  Add's some pizzazz to the consists!

Jeff Youst in Indana

EL Marion 2nd Sub 1964

Jeff 

Erie Lackawanna Marion Div.

Dayton Sub 1964

I find the likes of Malcolm Furlow, George Sellios and Howard Zane style of weathering is nothing based on reality and is very unrealistic.  Now if you look at the work of someone such as Todd Sullivan (former member of the RPI Model Railroad Club in Troy NY) who bases most of his weathering of phtoographs of the prototype, it has the perfect balance because it is photograph based, and not artisitic based. 

Ken L.

Even if photo based there is still the opportunity to over do it. In our modeled fleets we represent a small fraction of what is actually out there. Should the photo we have be one of a particularly worn example we will over do it for our fleet unless we have several of every class of car.

I will toss in this months reverse running article with regard to the ordinary.

Instead of a photo of one particular car how about looking at photos of a yard that shows lots of cars during the time period modeled. Most older cars seem to handle the elements rather well (think 50s here). Remember this is the era of lead based paint, cast iron and steel, parts built heavier than necessary, and no planned obsolescence yet.

In contrast look at modern era, planned obsolescence, lack of maintenance, no corporate pride, environmentally friendly paints and processes that don't seem to hold up, imported material and hardware that is built to be as cheap as possible. No wonder things look like they are 100 years old instead of five.

There is also the attempt to pare down the weight of the rolling stock as well, by using less metal in the car bodies. Look at all the dents and stretch marks in photos of cars built after the sixties verses the ones built from the thirties to the sixties. Those old car sides were straight and appeared very solid compared to things that were more modern. Same thing with automobiles, in the 50s you could stand on your car hood or roof if you wanted to and no big deal, try that today and just might be in for some expensive repairs to your car.

There are lots of things to like about the modern era, but there is lots to miss from our past.

While I can appreciate and respect the skill involved in weathering cars and rolling stock, it's just not for me. I run 'em right out of the box unless I'm adding details or repainting. MY railroad's history doesn't include a decline after WWII, or losing business to the trucking industry, or loss of passenger service - the interstate highway system as we know it today was never built because it wasn't needed, and railroads connect to regional airports with dedicated high-speed rail lines, supplanting short range commuter airlines as well. As such, the railroads still have a lot of pride in their equipment, and keep things clean and fresh. Graffiti isn't tolerated and is immediately painted out on the rare occasions it does appear. Every "medium" sized or bigger yard has a car washer as part of their maintenance facility, and uses it regularly... and all this is written up in the "alternate history" I created years ago when planning my first layout.

So you're not going to see any "rustbucket" weathering jobs in BARR paint... or even dusty ones, for that matter. We care about our image, our reputation, and our equipment, and do whatever is necessary to keep it clean and well-maintained as do the other railroads in MY world.

Since we consider our model RR's to be "on stage" what determines weathering - heavy, light, or none at all - is determined by the "ambience" of the play we create.  I can remember looking at a layout well over a decade ago that to me was very well done, heavily weathered but probably captures the "true" character of the area modeled. But you know what, even though the layout was excellent it wasn't a world I wanted to live in, too much coal dust everywhere, too dark too dreary, but well done.

Its kind of like asking, would you want to live in the world as depicted in Harrison Ford's Blade Runner, not me. Yet the darkness of the movie is one of its stand outs; so lots of heavy weathering.  I can remember learning wine tasting 101 when judging a wine, comparison shouldn't be made so much as to type of wine, lets say a Pinot Grigio but as to how does the wine reflect the terroir, the chosen grape, the winery technique in accomplishing what the wine set out to do. 

Some one mentioned George Sellios earlier, his RR is over weathered, yet I suspect judging by what George set out to do, he pulled off his goal magnificently.  Some find George's RR to be a caricature of the real thing but again measured against George's goals it works very well.   And we have all seen model RR's in MR that had zero weathering, obviously a choice that layout owner made for whatever reason, but as measured by the owner's standards it works.  But it might not work for you or me.

Or to illustrate another standard of layout.  I just watched last night a video on Mendheim's blog of a short train picking up cars, the video was roughly 20 minutes long.  The video illustrated Lance's philosophy prototypically of work done in an urban area with a lot of wait or down time for the short train while turnouts, gates opened, etc to operate the line.  And as I watched it, I thought - you know this isn't for me, I like mainline running through the mountains coming into a yard, combining rail fanning with operations.  But if you like having a lot of down time with your train as the crew works the line, great.

Same with weathering, we could measure it against the "terroir"..... lol.  Does the weathering reflect the atmosphere and elements of the line and the goals of the layout owner, is the layout not weathered out of fear of weathering or because the owner likes an un-weathered look?  So do I want to heavily weather a CP SD90 or do I prefer a newer look, pre let them rot philosophy?  If I'm weathering contemporary coal gons going to Roberts Bank here in BC, they better be some cars heavily weathered if you want accuracy.  But do you want accuracy?  I guess I'm just nervous about creating a formula where 5% of rolling stock is heavily weathered, 80 % somewhat weathered, etc.

I've been very interesting in this topic since I am in the stage of weathering my rolling stock or not. I like all levels of weathering because to me it represents the real world. So lately I have been watching a lot of prototype cars down here in South Florida, especially the CSX RR yard that they have next to I-95 in Broward County and I can easily say that 90% to 95 % of the cars are from medium heavy to very heavy weathered. From plain graffiti to rust buckets. The other + or - 6-10% have the typical wear and tea weathering. So for what I see it is very rarely there is a pretty clean type of rolling stock. But yet, down here the engines from CSX and FEC RR, are very nice and clean. Yet the CSX engines I have seen on the West Coast (Tampa Area) they are a lot dirtier and more rusty than over here. So you go figure. So I guess what I am saying it will boiled down to the owner of the pike and what he wants on his layout, just like "rsn48" - "weathering reflects the atmosphere and elements of the line and goals of the layout owner..."

 I feel the need to point out again that some people are in this hobby for the artistic and creative side of it and are not necessarily interested in uber realism. We've had this discussion before when it came to the " yes it's a model feature".  It's not everyone who pursues this hobby goal to convince the viewer that they are looking at real trains!!  Sorry for the bold type but it seems that some people forget that. I still contend that it's impossible to "over weather" anything but for the sake of argument, whether or not "over weathering" exist has to be reconciled with what the modelers intentions are.  I haven't asked them personally but I'm pretty sure Malcolm Furlow and George Sellios are not trying to convince anyone how "real" their trains and/or layouts are. I don't believe the late great John Allen was trying to convince anyone how real his trains were. I believe these modelers are and were trying to convey a sense of "atmosphere" and a certain sort of romanticized vision of how things were.  As I've said before it's somewhat akin to comparing a Norman Rockwell painting to an actual photograph. For sure an apples and oranges comparison.  Let's try to consider the modelers intent before we going dumping a blanket criticism like "over weathered" on their work.

Michael

P.S. IMHO the simplest and most effective weathering you can do to any car in any era after dull coating it is to take whatever the "base earth" color your scenery is and put it  in an airbrush and give your rolling stock and locos a light dusting with it.  This ties everything together. Of course, you can do more weathering if you want but I think everything on your layout should have this "base earth color dusting" as a bare minimum.

...is more towards an artistic impression, or however you wish to call or describe it it, and "realism" (that is attempting to have models that look exactly like how they do or did on the prototype) is not the final goal, that is fine.  However, given the original poster's clear intention on replicating the prototype in miniature, I would think that would provide context to the discussion going on here, with the (unspoken) goal of having models that accurately represents the prototype.  That's all.

Ken L.

"..is more towards an artistic impression, or however you wish to call or describe it it, and "realism" (that is attempting to have models that look exactly like how they do or did on the prototype) is not the final goal, that is fine.  However, given the original poster's clear intention on replicating the prototype in miniature, I would think that would provide context to the discussion going on here, with the (unspoken) goal of having models that accurately represents the prototype. "

 I think we need to keep in mind the scale we are working at and how that affects the realism. Shakespeare is not "realistic" but he captures the reality of living better than something like the evening news which strives to match the prototype. Same thing for Norman Rockwell and his caricatured  scenes. A train with the "prototypically correct" weathering might not transmit the realness of the railroad as much as a train with more or less weathering,  it's a decision for the builder to make and then see what the results provide. We know trains have flanges for instance but if the scale is too small  scale size flanges don't have the same emotional  impact they might have if they were made oversize a bit?  It's a fine line between scale size and too oversize and it varies with the specific part and the viewing distance and the scale of the model, just as does weathering of the cars.......DaveB

....who it is abundantly clear don't have the same goals as the OP into the discussion.

Michael