That weather-beaten look

If anybody is going for that really weathered look, I’ve got some photos of a prototype you could use as a guide. These cars have been parked here for years, if not decades, and I doubt Amtrak is even aware of their existance. Quite a waste of good cars if you ak me. It looks like 3 Amtrak 'liners, two boxcars and another car at the end. Can’t remember what it was, maybe a gondola. Sorry about the picture size, but I wanted you to be able to see detail. I tried to cut out unneccesary stuff to reduce their size.

Hey Dave- checked out your IVRR, the U boat looks real good weathered up. Keep posting pics, and if possible, a trackplan. I love shortlines, they are so much fun to model cause they have soul!
As for the pics of the Amtrak cars, ya gotta wonder just how a RR looses stuff like that.
In Colorado Springs back in the early 80’s there was an F unit abandoned on a spur that had a bridge washed out, it had been stripped but was still fun to play on!

i think that much weathering would look silly espessialy on a liner its hard to define the difference bettween prototypical and overkill the margin is small it would be best to save that for a coal or steel factory cars

For a current-service passenger car excessive weathering is of course out of place, but for, say, a MoW car converted from a heavyweight passenger car, it might fill the bill. I have seen converted short-line MoW stuff that looks like it has been assigned to support tracklaying jobs on the seventh level of Hell and back!

Phil, thanks for the comments! I was hoping to get a small diorama set up to have a little more realistic place to take pictures of my locos and rolling stock, and I was hoping to get a lot of buildings and rolling stock built/weathered while we were waiting for our new house. But we’re forging ahead with the move a lot faster than I had anticipated when I built that site so I haven’t had time to do any more locos or anything. I have come up with a track plan, but some recent info I came across about my prototype has me redesigning it, as well as rewriting the fictional history of my line. Maybe I’ll go update that site now while I have a little time…