Yea......What he said....... AND just as a side note....I did get one MT car that had the weathering wiping off, a quick shot of Dullcote stopped the issue, I also added a bit more weathering before the lacquer dried, now one of my favorite cars...... PEACE
Unfortunately adhesion promoter and flexative additives in the paint doesn't seem to work very well on our Celcon parts (trucks and wheels) Early on I wanted to produce at least the trucks out of styrene but it will not work because it's too brittle to make it out of the molds...plus you can't get really fine detail with it. Still I keep looking for alternatives...possibly some media blasting on the side frames to rough the surface. Joe
I have just painted an Arnold SW1 and the hand rails are peeling due to the plastic. If I don't touch it, it is fine. same basic thing. there are limitations in life
I've weathered EVERY MT truck sideframe using Dullcote for years...I believe 1973??? I'm brushing on the Dullcote then I apply chalks as weathering looks great and stays put....
I don't touch the trucks outer therefore no accidental wiping. If I need to reposition the cars on the track somewhere I just start to put the car on the track and just give a little jiggle if each truck is not setting on the rails in alignment-works fine...maybe a few seconds. This is compared to sitting the cars on the track holding the trucks to set straight to rails-I might do that with the non weathered versions.
I'm not a N scale modeller but do a lot of weathering of my HO models. I have seen some of these weathered MT cars at our local club as one of the N gaugers has a set of UP hoppers. I think these look superb, I know they are handled regularly as he has to put them on and take them off every meet but they hold up just fine. If it was an odd car I would say you got a dud and get it exchanged, however it seems more you buy are like this than not so I am struggling with an explanation. My advise would be to dulcote models immediately before handling or running. Regarding the paint flaking off the plastic trucks etc, Handrails particularly Atlas & Proto in HO are made of this slick plastic too, the flexible paint used for R/C shells is good but I find dulcoting models before weathering has better effects than just afterwards. it adds 'bite' to the surface to help paint stick.
