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.

     Since NOBODY will be reading this I guess I can vent here. 

     Same thing other people have griped about in [ ... ]

Hopper Weathering Clinic II
By Bill Mock
December 2009

So here's how those BN Hoppers turned out after the surface rust dried. Not bad. I'll [ ... ]

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 [ ... ]