About Us

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

I'm Joe, business owner and own this website. My son is Nicholas - my assistant,  part-time valuable web design critic, customer relations, packaging. My best friend. We are a small USA manufacturer & international retail supplier. We offer our own very unique weathering products for professional Custom Model Railroading. It's all about the looks! 

I enjoyed a very successful and travelled career in non union and then later union residential and commercial construction. I've also gained other experience to create new or improved products in the model train hobby and market. Nick, and I enjoy today being a business that I started in 1997. That was when I began selling just one product on eBay when it was first incorporated in 1995. The Decal & Detail Remover.

My father was a very 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 some attention in his machine shop and those skills and knowledge suit me well today. Our family also had a beef farming operation.That was the "love of labor" like I never imagined! In reality a very expensive hobby too. The farm provided the countless valuable experiences and of course such great times in learning, togetherness, and life. 

In Prep High School one of my advanced studies was Chemistry. During my last year in school I got a 2nd shift job at the General Electric Co.  I got hired as an apprentice in Locomotive Assembly (Domestics, Foreign, and Amtrak) then leaving as a Mechanic Assembler 5 years later due to a 1 year layoff when Amtrak was discontinued with GE during rough economic times in that industry. I charted a new path in the construction trades. Eventually seeing the country as a well paid journeyman and superintendent. I worked on the best projects.  

Owing to that love of Trains.. In 1972 I built a 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 black and brown Magic Marker pens. Does that sound familiar today? But this was very short lived. The sharp track rail ties shredded the tips. Dragging a felt marker across smooth metal rails was just not at all the way. But funny...today modelers are still trying it! So the idea for weathering model railroad track and more has stuck with me. I continually obsessed with improvement. I invented and developed a reusable, refillable mini paint roller specially designed for painting model railroad track. Today known as - Rusty Rails Painter. 

About the same time came the desire to re-number about 50 Nickel Plate Road coal cars. I began experimenting with paint removers, brake fluid, you name it. Again many trials. So in 1995 Joe's Decal & Detail Remover became a thing, popular amongst a growing railroad community, then Ebay sales. Today it is evolving with the new paint and ink formulas the hobby train manufacturers use in painting our models.

Joes Custom 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 one needed to seal it with clear coat so it wouldn't fall off or smear when handled. That seemed to be a "You better like it" or else. Too often the look even later was not ideal to me. So I began formulating liquid colored dyes that feature being- that when after they dry they can be reworked by a liquid solution again. But also when dry- not need any sealer. Yet be safe to handle. The only change since 2022 was going back to a powder with the Limestone color. There really are many color tones to this Limestone color and can be mixed / blended with the other liquid dyes to yield even more favorable results. Like having a spotting paste consistency! It adds the "texture" look to a rusty finish. It is soluble and has the same advantages as the liquid dye. The Dyes are great because unlike diluted paint the range of transparency is far better. 

Real Rocks Ballast is real crushed stone. Made with an added colored dye powder and baked for color fastness at the manufacturer. Better than much lighter crushed and dyed walnut shell. It keeps small rolling stock on the tracks better too. The edges are not sharp is the only trade off.

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. I learned from him. Today I can manage a 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 hobby store 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 work-only shop is near downtown Erie and full of tooling & jigs, workrooms, benches, chemicals, processing space, and stock materials. Nothing on display for sale.

When the Covid-19 pandemic came, many in our hobby wondered what happened to us! Many in our model trains retail business quit for one reason or another. Since then, strange economic times for model railroading have seen a new normal. AS example, we used to supply several hobby dealerships in France and the UK. Like the historic Bromsgrove Models in the UK, they are gone. Today may notice hobby shops in general do not even carry as much inventory. This sometimes causes our items showing up as "Out Of Stock" in online companies. If even they carry our products still. We we apologize for that but here we are, and in a pinch..Joe's Model Trains has a good supply to serve your needs! 

Thank you for your valuable time here.

Keeping Model Railroads Great!

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