A quick and simple method to get rid of the plastic new freight car look is to spray a light coat of Dullcoat.  This will take away the 'toy' train look of your layout.  If you don't have any Testor's Dullcoat you can use any Matte Finish spray to get the same results.  Just a simple spray to each side and let dry.  This can be done to any plastic kits also.

I finally decided on the Zize of my layout. A mere 30 inches wide, L shape, length 77.5 inches on the short and 126.5 on the long. Now I've just gotta come [ ... ]

Scratch building is defined in Wikipedia as “The process of building a scale model "from scratch", ie. from raw materials, rather than building it from [ ... ]

So there I was..had my speeder all painted and glass in the window and everything dull coated and figure inside and..hunky-dory.
I went to LHS becasue [ ... ]