An interesting story I heard from a railroader was regarding the “brake smoke” that was generated when descending a long grade. I assumed this was some mix of ballast dust and brake shoe dust. The rai

I made a mistake - Tamiya NATO Black is my good-enough wheel face color for the oily look. Especially for (but not limited to) coal hoppers where the overwhelming dust would be coal dust. NATO Black c

Jim, like Brian Stokes, I’ve been experimenting with simulating plain-bearing journal (and wheel face) oiliness for a couple years. I had better luck with the latter, until last July when a mistake un

Interesting information, William. Thanks. Matt Goodman Columbus, Ohio Sent from my mobile

Nice job on the wheel color - black with a bit of sheen to suggest oil. Rail color looks good as well. Matt Goodman Columbus, Ohio, US

I use Dullcote through an airbrush, and subscribe to the wet application to allow leveling, but not as heavy as demonstrated in the VLS video. I have applied Dullcote that thick via their rattle can,

Thanks for this, Andy. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve attempted to replicate this “dark board” effect using a micro brush and dark or extra dark versions of Pan Pastel's Umber, Burnt Sienna or Iron

Thanks for writing about this, Lester. I purchased a scalpel handle and #11 equivalent blades from a UK seller on Ebay a year or two ago. Around the same time, I also purchased two Olfa knives: A Desi

And a third on the Mitutoyo. Mentioned in passing in this thread was the battery life question. One of the reasons I chose the Mitutoyo was it’s claim that it had better power management, leading to b

All, on another list I subscribe to, there was a discussion of a triangle symbol painted on cars that had lubricating journal pads installed (this was the N&W). One respondent briefly noted that durin

That advice and information helps a great deal. Thanks Dave. Matt Goodman Columbus, Ohio, US

Thanks for the help Howard.

All, My father recently got the itch to reproduce a 1907 American Strawboard boxcar (as seen here and here) and has given me the job of researching decals. I used Photoshop Element’s perspective crop

Dennis, as usual, shares interesting information. Enough so that I went back to the Cyc., which mentioned the repositioning of the low (inner) side guard rail relative to the high side running rail (t

A bit more information from a Railway Maintenance And Maintenance Cyclopedia (1929) is attached. There’s a couple more pages of detail, if you’re interested in various rules, practices and vendors of

Duke’s advertising collection is quite good. My town of residence is pretty well covered, though unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of close-up freight car photos like this one. Regardless, they are gr

Agreed on the “no rusty wheels”. I’ve been working on prototypically modeling/weathering wheel faces for solid bearing trucks recently. Every time I think I have an accurate and easily reproducible me

The radial lubrication streaking on the left most wheel face caught my eye. Probably from a leak through the rear seal while standing still. Matt Goodman Columbus, Ohio, US

Thanks Eric - I’ll take a look through. It might fill out some of more details on strawboard in general. The ownership part is turning out to be a real rabbit hole - mainly thanks to Barber being invo

Mr. Barber also has a connection with another relatively “behind the scenes” industry - strawboard production (one of my areas of interest). Mr. Barber’s formed the Portage Strawboard in 1882 - not to