Actor Michael Gross (who Ken Patterson interviewed in his Nov 2016 issue What's Neat column), is also the cover story of the Jan 2017 issue. He does a detailed step-by-step of his rolling stock weathering methods. From the cover photo you can see that Michael's a very capable prototype modeler.

I bought a Boulder Creek track scale for the coal operation on my layout.  I was starting to think about installing it and I cant quite figure out how the weighting operation would work regarding the gauntlet track.  I understand the purpose to keep the engine off the scale but how do you weigh the car next to the engine?  The only was I can see is with an idler car similar to what is used to push cars onto a ferry.

This is not a tutorial—this is just what I did not knowing what else to do. So here's my resurrected N-scale RBOX first-attempt again (though there's too much acrylic paint still remaining—it was quite a struggle just to get this much it off!). To be faithful to the prototype, the model still requires more washes, but I skipped that step, eager to try out one of my new Microscale graffiti decals (I'm not nearly skilled enough to hand-draw my own).

Enthused with the recent Arduino control of the staging yard, I decided to strike while the iron was hot and try another Arduino project. I'm not very good at learning stuff for the sake of learning (like C programming) without an end goal, so I needed an idea and an arc welding simulator fits the bill.

Welding simulators are common, but I after a quick study of 'prototype' arc welding, I realized there was more to the project than first appeared.