About Us

Questions or comments to joesmodeltrains@hotmail.com

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Where we came from.

An introduction of sorts of who we are and where we came from....I'm Joe the owner and creator of this customer friendly website. My son is Nicholas. My assistant, valuable web design critic, customer relations, part-time packaging, best friend and 🥰son a man could have. We are happy and fortunate to be a small USA business manufacturer & supplier offering a line of unique quality weathering products. 

Besides a now retired accomplished career in union commercial construction, I've acquired some shall I say.. relevant experience to create and continue enjoying Joe's Model Trains Co as one of my small and progressive ventures originally started in 1997. 

My father was a career tool and die man and beef cattle farmer. I paid attention in the machine shop. On the family farm at an early age I learned to weld and use cutting torches from the best in the trades by his coworker buddy, Bill who was welding instructor at Kaiser Aluminum in Erie. So I have tooling, machine, fabrication and mechanical foundations that progressed through today. Later on, one of my studies in Prep School was Honors Chemistry. Later in full time employment at General Electric Co., hired initially as an apprentice in locomotive assembly (foreign, domestic, and Amtrak) I went on to love more than 5 years of heavy overtime experiences until an industry downturn lasting years prompted a major layoff and career change. 

So what became of that you may ask? Well, I built a huge 2 level 6' x 32' (1.8m x 9.8m) HO layout in my parent's 3rd fl. apartment building. It was brass track. That layout is when I became obsessed with the sides of my track not looking real. My first idea was using a Magic Marker pen. I started to paint my rail and within a half hour I threw that marker pen across the room! The sharp track rail ties shredded the tip so bad it was like dragging a felt bristle mop across the rails. And funny how a half century later today modelers are still at it? That same problem plagues modelers today. So the idea for weathering model railroad track has stuck with me for a very long time. And I just didn't want to go the airbrush route. So I invented and developed a reusable refillable mini paint roller specially designed for painting model railroad track- Rusty Rails Painter. Several versions occurred through trial and error naturally. 

Then came the desire to safely renumber about 50 Nickle Plate coal cars. I began making a new formula for it. Again many trials. Joe's Detail and Decal Remover kept evolving with the paint and ink manufacturers making our models.

 Joes Model Trains Co. Weathering Dyes. Not being much of an artist I wanted to weather scenery, buildings, and rolling stock but powders and paints were too much of a challenge. Too often the look was not ideal to me when it dried but going back was a scary option. A clear coat over powdered dust and liquid dyes to seal a "good enough-let it be" model just didn't sit well. So I formulated liquid dyes that even after they dry can be re-manipulated to look better and be safe to handle without a clear coat. My only powder today is the limestone color. It used to be liquid until this year 2024. It is soluble and has the same advantages and more as the liquid dyes. Especially in the range of transparency. 

Our Real Rocks is real crushed granite stone with a dyed powder and baked for color fastness at the manufacturer. Ballast products seemed to always be an ok thing until I discovered architectural model technology on model displays. Expensive but it's the best. Better than much lighter crushed and dyed walnut shell that won't blow away when a ceiling fan turns on. It keeps small railroad cars on a track better too. 

After traveling through a  construction and management career...what a better place to live than Erie, PA. watching and listening to at least 20 freight trains a day roll through a city with such a rich history of trains. I'm working on updating the YouTube how-to videos next👍. 

Nick is around me a lot too! But it was one of his early passions in college Graphics Design that showed me how impressive a computer could be. So I learned from him! Today I can do this web site, configure networking, repair our own color printers and we even perform hardware upgrades to our computers and laptops. Nick moved on from Graphics Design too. With a ton of student loans to pay. He has a full time career as an Advanced Medical Technician at UPMC and going soon to school for Anesthetist Tech. He monitors and troubleshoots all the digital things we see plugged in a wall behind every hospital bed and nurses stations on assigned floors. When any devices get plugged in or button is pressed in any patient room or nurses station that signals or prompts another thing to perform a function and has monitoring in a main Monitoring Room. Everything runs smooth until it doesn't. So his time is limited with Joes Model Trains Co. We love each others company, humor, and share new ideas and a thirst for knowledge. 

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Where we are.

Our home and office is no brick & mortar / re-seller kind of hobby store here folks☹️. Once in a while train enthusiasts via Google Maps and a Yelp inquiry have ventured here hoping to find a retail store. Nice warm welcomes but had to leave disappointed with money left in their wallets.🙂.

Our shop is downtown Erie and full of Tooling & jigs, workrooms and benches, chemicals and processing space, stock materials A through Z and literally take up 90% of the space.

When a world pandemic comes along to interrupt everything for a few years, many in our hobby wondered what happened to joesmodeltrains.com. Well, there was never an idea to just quit. Many in our model trains hobby had to do that. For example, we used to supply several hobby dealerships in France. Today they are gone now. Hobby shops you will notice today do not prefer to carry much "inventory", if at all. They are more reliant on making more frequent purchase orders on requested items instead. This causes problems like items showing up as "Out Of Stock" on web searches. Many customers don't want to wait for a dealer's list to fill up before an order gets placed with a vendor. Annoying. And in some cases we chose not to supply to Wholesalers anymore. The cons outweigh the pros. So if you're a club or part of a club and you need things faster- Just let us know! The discounting still gets passed along. And in some areas online our products are more expensive than our pricing. So it just may pay to shop and compare.

We find ways to survive or thrive. We believe that the "pauses in life" are a good thing. We get chances to see things better! Quality over Quantity is a life worth living!

We count our Blessings! 

Thank you for your valuable time on our website.

Keeping Model Railroads Great!

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