--- In STMFC@..., <cepropst@...> wrote: In part"

I think many folks are afraid to weather anything for fear of
wrecking their new masterpiece. I remember as a teenager weathering
a new kit with cigarette ashes and taking it back to the hobby shop
to show it off. Later, as I progressed to painting and decaling I
used weathering to cover up mistakes : ))

I love it Clark! Back in the Athearn "blue box" days of the late 1960's I was very pleased when Athearn introduced their steam era series of 40 ft. box cars but VERY frustrated with the fact that only one car number was offered. Fortunately for a number of roads offered
Athearn chose car numbers ending in a 3, 6, 8 of 9. With some encouragement from some of my friends in the Tech Model R.R. club it
was soon found that working carefully with a fine brush that the four numbers given could be fairly easily altered; a 3 to an 8, a 6 or 9 to a 0, an 8 to a 3 and so on. With the CPR being one of those roads we saw a lot of cars from in northern New England I soon had better than a half dozen "Canadian Pacific Spans the World" cars added to my fleet! Each car was weathered and in each case it was hard to see that the last, or next to last, digit in the car number had been changed. For me it was far easier, and looked better, than running around trying to find decals of the exact same font and size as what was on a given car. A little care in weathering can not only make a model look a LOT more realistic but can also hide a minor issue or two with no detrimental effects whatsoever. But I can still remember my joy when the Train Miniature line was introduced and greatloy added to the variety of rolling stock we had available at that time, never having particualrly cared for the Model Die Casting/Roundhouse
line of rolling stock in those years.

Cordially, Don Valentine