About Us

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Where we came from.

An introduction and short 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, valuable web design critic, customer relations, part-time packaging, best friend and loving son🥰 a man could raise. 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. Truly a niche market.

Besides a now retired accomplished career in union commercial construction, I've acquired some I may say.. relevant experience to create helpful new or improved products in this hobby and market. Today, Nick and I continue to enjoy Joe's Model Trains Co as one small and progressive venture originally started in 1997 when I began selling just the Detail and Decal Remover on eBay. eBay was incorporated in 1995.

My father was a highly skilled tool and die man from São Paulo, Brazil coming to Kaiser Aluminum, Erie PA. He built a nice machine shop at home too. So I paid attention in the machine shop. Our family also had a small beef farming operation. A very expensive hobby. On the farm at an early age I learned to work hard. Our many friends were very talented. i learned to use cutting torches and weld from the best in the trades from his coworker buddy Bill who was a welding instructor at Kaiser Aluminum. So I had early foundations of tooling, machine, fabrication and mechanicals. That progressed to where today I have all that and more. 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 initially as an apprentice in locomotive assembly (foreign, domestic, and Amtrak). Leaving as a assembly mechanic after 5 years and a 1 year layoff after Amtrak was discontinued with GE during harder economic times. I then started a new path in the construction fields. 

During that passion and 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. So, 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. 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 made 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 "ya'll best like it or else". 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. 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 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 the space.

Then 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 and the UK. Today they are gone. Today you will notice hobby shops in general do not carry much inventory. 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" much more often. 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. 

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 here.

Keeping Model Railroads Great!

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