Has anyone ever tried to stain and varnish brass, or other metals, to match mahogany? I know this might sound strange, but we have paint shop records to prove that's what the railroad did. Any tricks that might help? Thanks!

It sounds like it may be wood graining, which can be done on any surface that can be painted. Any wood can be imitated.

Generally, you lay down a base or ground color, usually a mustard yellow, then paint on a tinted varnish, then dry brush off much of the varnish, leaving a fine undefined grained like pattern. This can be followed by dragging graining combs or tools through the still wet varnish, leaving more defined grain, and possibly add details with a feather or a rag. Some grainers use an additional color layer (usually a darker color) added in a similar manor.

Finally you varnish the object.

Wood matching is a function of both color and grain pattern. Some grainers had more skill than others. There is a local story of an itinerant grainer who would change color but always grained in an Oak pattern. If you wanted mahogany you got dark red colored oak. If you wanted maple you got a light tan oak…

The process concept is not so much to make the item look exactly like the wood in question, but instead to look close enough that attention is not drawing to the object.

The Bay Area Electric Railroad Museum has examples of Mahogany graining in their steel Sacramento Northern Hall Scott cars. We found examples of both Mahogany and Oak graining (different years) in our 1882 narrow gauge wood combine.

Thanks, Randy. In this case there aren't any wide surfaces, so I doubt that graining will be necessary or even feasible. I have these brass baggage racks you can see in the photo:

http://www.irm.org/gallery/CAE309/aag

They're now painted black, but we discovered they should be stained and varnished for the target date of c. 1948. I imagine they were meant to match the varnished trim behind them. I'm thinking I'll try painting them with brown primer, then apply mahogany stain, then varnish.