• GROTON, S.D. (AP) -- Not far from the tracks where life-size train cars pass by the Milwaukee Railroad depot on North Main Street, identical model car trains circle around a detailed track inside the depot, representing the exact same cars that have passed through town.
• Charlie Davis creates stained and graffiti-tagged model cars that show the realistic, hard life of a full-sized train car.
• "I like weathering cars to make them look like they have been out on the rails, traveling, doing what they're supposed to be doing, and part of that is graffiti, because they get tagged," Davis said. "And I found it interesting. As I was paying more attention to the graffiti, I would see cars that had been tagged by the same person, many cars, over and over."
• Davis, of Groton, uses the same graffiti seen on the life-size cars that pass through Aberdeen on his own miniatures.
• "Usually during the spring and summer when the weather's nice, I go out and photograph train cars," Davis told the Aberdeen American News (http://bit.ly/1d4Egde ).
• After that, he uses the photos to make scaled-down versions of the same artwork to put onto his model trains, which are showcased among other trains in the James Valley Model Railroad Association display at the depot.
• Davis said it can take up to two to three weeks to weather and decal a car. "It's a very time-consuming project," he said.
• First, he loads the photos onto his computer and sorts them by car type. Then, he picks out the photos with the best decals showing. There can be angles and ribs on the cars that may distort the graffiti in the photo.
• He then whites out the background, scales down the image and prints it onto decal paper. With a lot of practice and patience, Davis has been able to perfect sealing the decals onto the cars without air bubbles.
• "It should look as though the decal is painted on the car," Davis said. Cars without ribs or edges that stick out are more difficult than cars that don't, he said.
• To weather the cars, Davis uses three basic mediums: oil paint, acrylic paint and powdered chalks.

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