Northwestern on Trestle

One of the fascinating features, to me, at the DMRRC are the trestle bridges.  The detail involved is amazing to me.  I'd like to think the trestles were hand built - and if they're not, please don't confuse me with the facts.  All that is missing for me is the noise of the metal and wood when the trains are moving.  Takes me back to riding roller-coasters on wood frames.
I like the looks of the Northwestern Engine.   The frontal view can be seen here.  The detail lines of the Engine are so unique.  And for the most part, from what I can tell, this engine is not weathered.
I never know if everyone 'likes' my take on photographs.  This is the photograph that is available to the DMRRC club - if they like straight photographs.

ISO 100, f/6.3, 4 sec, 50 mm

Manual, 11 shot focus stack

The house and train are too clean and shiny.
To me, this scene cries out for some high contrast to bring out the rock features, the house definition and whatever I can find in the trestle.  We need to age the scene a little.
I tried Photomatix and that adventure was like Goldilocks and the Bears.  Just couldn't find the right mix to get the rocks and the train right.  There were some interesting combinations of highlight and shadow lights and I might have used one or a mix if I wanted to do a dawn or dusk scene.  I wanted to keep this light relatively even and daylight.  In my head, there is a lot of detail.
I tried my On One sharpening and color fixers, and again - just couldn't find the right mix.
As a last resort, I hit it with my favorite NIK filter - and it hit.

However, with this filter something very odd happened.  On the red roof of the house, there was a 'spot' that really didn't look natural, and unfortunately it was an eye catcher.  That spot needed to be eliminated.  Roof work can be a bit tricky to keep the look right.  I used the clone tool.  The trick is to line up the clone so the roof tile shapes stay the same.  And since there is a bit of an angle, even with the clone target directly below, the tile size didn't match exactly, but around 90%.  And if you are looking that close.......
The other interesting item is I've started sizing to 1920x1080 pixels to better fit most monitors.  For this image, that doesn't work.  There's stuff going on high, low, left and right.  I had to revert to the 5x7 format to get all the subjects in the image.
So the final image that I have, that I like, is this:

This version looks more 'real' to me.  The house has some wear, the cars on the street don't look so shiny.  And the train looks like it has been used.  A little more realistic in my view, I might see this in Johnstown, PA.