About Us

 An introduction and friendly story of sorts of who we are and where we came from.

I'm Joe, a small business owner and webmaster of this website. My son is Nicholas - my assistant,  part-time valuable web design critic, customer relations, packaging. My best friend. We are happy and fortunate to be a progressive debt-free small USA business manufacturer & supplier. Especially during challenging global economic times. We are offering a line of unique quality weathering products in Hobby Model Railroading. 

Besides a now retired career in union commercial construction, I've acquired some past relevant experience to create helpful, new, or improved products in this hobby and market. Nick and I enjoy being one small progressive business that I originally started in 1997 when I began selling just one product. The Decal & Detail Remover on eBay. eBay was then a brand new thing incorporated in 1995.

My father was a highly skilled tool and die man from São Paulo, Brazil coming to Kaiser Aluminum, Erie PA. He had a nice machine shop at home too. I paid attention in the machine shop. Our family also had a small beef farming operation. It was in reality a very expensive hobby. But as well provided many awesome experiences and great times. Our many friends were very talented. I learned to use cutting torches and weld from the best in the trade by his coworker buddy Bill who was a welding instructor at Kaiser Aluminum. In High School, one of my studies was Advanced Chemistry. During my last year in school I got a 2nd shift job at General Electric Co. Hired as an apprentice in locomotive assembly (foreign, domestic, and Amtrak). Leaving as a Mechanic 5 years later after and a 1 year layoff when Amtrak was discontinued with GE during bad industry times. I then started a new path in the construction fields. 

During that love of all things trains.. I built a 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 is when I first became obsessed with the sides of my track not looking real. My first idea was using a Magic Marker pen. Does that sound familiar? Ha Ha. The sharp track rail ties shredded the tip and dragging a hard felt ink marker across very smooth rails was just plain not cutting it for me. But funny how a half century later and today modelers are still trying it. So the idea for weathering model railroad track and more has stuck with me. So I invented and developed a reusable refillable mini paint roller specially designed for painting model railroad track. A crude initial fabrication but it had promise! A thousand hours later I developed a legit tool. Culminating in my latest version - Rusty Rails Painter. 

About the same time came the desire to safely renumber about 50 Nickle Plate coal cars. I began experimenting for a new formula for it. Again many trials. Joe's Decal & Detail Remover keeps evolving with the paint and ink manufacturers painting our models.

 Joes Model Trains Co Weathering Dyes. Not being much of an artist I wanted to weather scenery, buildings, and rolling stock. The powders and paints were ok but then you needed to seal it with clear and that seemed to be a final say with it. Too often the look was not ideal to me when it dried but going back was a ugly option. So I began formulating liquid dyes that even after they dry can be re-manipulated by liquid again. My only powder today is the limestone color. There really is many many color tones to this particular color. It can be mixed / blended with the other liquid dyes! It used to be liquid until this year. 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 stone. An added colored dye powder and baked for color fastness at the manufacturer. 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. 

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 near downtown Erie and full of tooling & jigs, workrooms and benches, chemicals and processing space, stock materials that literally take up 90% of space.

When a Covid-19 pandemic comes along to interrupt everything for a few years, many in our hobby wondered what happened to us! Many in our model trains hobby had to quit. Since then unstable economic times have been a new normal. We used to supply several hobby dealerships in France and the UK. They, like Bromsgrove in the UK, are gone. You may notice hobby shops in general do not even carry as much inventory numbers of each item. This causes especially online items showing up as "Out Of Stock" more often than not depending on what a search engine on any given time relays back. So here we are! Joe's Model Trains Co. with a good constant supply of high quality unique custom model railroading stock to serve all desires in enjoying a more stress-free time with your time and money in your custom model railroading!

We find ways to survive and thrive. We believe that the "pauses in life" are sometimes 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 here.

Keeping Model Railroads Great!

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