Not to diminish any respect for the work or workmanship, but I can't wait to see the cars get appropriately weathered and dirty to really look like a freight train consist did. I think making everything look too clean is a bit jarring and false, but time will fix that soon enough in any case. Better to maintain them even if they don't reflect reality for a while than let them rot.

Painted lettering can go forty, maybe fifty years, and while it becomes weathered, it still looks like a railroad car. Vinyl starts to shrink and peel, and just looks like hell. The problem is, the paint behind it will still be solid, but too weathered to want to put new vinyl on, so it doesn't get replaced. OK, I guess, if you can keep your freightcars inside. I'd rather see the restoration work weather the same as the original.

Otto, Les -

Have you, by any chance, run across the original paint specs for the MDT cars? I've been compiling a reference list of colors over the years and have nothing on MDT, either the orange or white schemes.

Thanks