Nobody was inking or washing this stuff in my day, and it would have been pointless as so many model kits in that era had raised panel lines, not cut ones.

Of course, the ridiculous detail-for-detail's-sake was as deplorable then as the over-weathering so common today. There is a lot the model railway folk could learn from the IPMS crowd, but there also is a current propensity to over-weather.

It looks horrible to me. As a soldier, even on active service we spent what time we could maintaining our gear, just so the shit wouldn't break or malfunction when we needed it most. Sure, clean was sometimes impossible, but dam! If I was the senior NCO or WO in charge of whomever allowed their gear to look like some of the models people show, there would be some serious shot-group adjustments being made in the junior leadership!