The current trainboard.com weathering challenge is a graffiti challenge, and I decided to weather a Southern Pacific Boxcar and attempt my hand at graffiti…I used cheap acrylics for the fade, roof and patch, an ultra fine Sharpie for the two tags (a Dead Kennedys logo and an Anarchy A)…and I […]

Weathering a boxcar…

From day one of the planning of the Standard Gauge Pacific Coast Railway, I have decided to really stray from the prototype and build a hill with a tunnel to hide the loop factor. My plan was to build a base with the same blue foam and then an old […]

Making a mountain out of a mole hill…

My wife is Italian, beautiful olive skin. Her foundation makeup is a darker tan….and a lot lighter than Southern Pacific Boxcar Red…..   Looks like a good fade to me….

The wife is going to kill me….

A few months ago, Smoken’ Joe and I were talking about starting a weathering contest at Trainboard.com. After a few emails back and forth, Joe and Ben at Micro-Trains agreed that it was a good idea. They sent me a box full of Micro-Trains weathered cars, and each month, trainboard.com is […]

So I organized a contest on Trainboad.com…

I swapped out about three inches of track, and my almost 2 year old is addicted to watching a pair of SD40-T2’s pull a string of cars through the pink foam valley of Santa Ynez, CA….I really have to start ballasting and building the hills….

The Work Train is Done!

I did some troubleshooting, and one of the joints had a little bit of solder on top of the rail, and the other end has a kink in the rail. The 2-8-0 now is able to run through it fine going forward northbound, but derails any other way. I pulled […]

Time to call in the work train