ezdays, you bring up a great point and I wholly agree with your assertion. abutt, thank you for your compliments and congratulations on your 52 years of marriage. In response to your inquiry referring to the vehicles on my layout, the passenger cars in the pictures are made by a company called Malibu International LTD. I picked them up at a Walmart for $1.50 a pop. They are pretty nice little models and they have a fewdifferent makes to choose from. The trucks are manufactured by a company known as "Classic Metal Works", and the line of HO scale vehicles are in their "Mini Metals" line of cars. I recommend them 100%. As far as getting rid of the toy like quality, the black and white photos do wonders for the cars themselves,however, I give all my vehicles a wash with water soluble artists oil paints available at art supply stores. My preferred color for this is a burnt umber wash. The oils are far more subtle in achieving slight tonal variations consisting of everything from barely noticeable dirt, to heavy dirt grime effects. I have not gotten around to weathering all the vehicles on my layout as of yet, but there are some color photos of my layout {14 posts before this thread in the photography section of this forum}, where you can see them in color. Thanks again for the kind words.
Stuart
Stuart