Hi all,
I have a large collection of freight cars from different makes. I wish to change car numbers on some that I have duplicates of to make them unique. I also wish to remove all the factory printing on some cars to apply new decals for alternate roads.
Is there a general removal fluid that works across most makes without requiring the car's paint to be resprayed ? On UK stock that I have done before I have used lighter fluid( butane liquid type ) with reasonable results although it takes some time on certain brands of cars. The main brands I wish to do are Kadee,Branchline and Walthers/Proto 2000.
I have quite a few of the Branchline Trains billboard reefers including duplicates that |I wish to do and the push/glue on sides are moulded in white or yellow plastic so those will be easy with a plastic compatible stripper although there are still the car numbers etc on the ends to sort out.
Thanks if anybody can advise.
Rob
I find Walthers Solvaset works well. Brush some on the car, then rub the lettering with a rubber pencil eraser. It usually takes a few minutes, and a couple of applications of Solvaset, but the lettering in time will 'melt' and come off. Don't push too hard or you might remove the paint underneath too.
Here's an example, sorry link isn't 'active'.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/m/mrr-layouts/2289588.aspx
Solvaset often does the trick. Walthers carries it as a decal setting solution. It is mostly formaldehyde. It will soften any kind of decal, and it often works on painted on marking too.
You could do what the real roads do, namely patchout. They paint over the old numbers with black, leaving a black patch. Then they just re paint the new numbers on top of the black.
Or, if you have the right color paint, that matches the old paint job, you can just paint over the old numbers. I did this on a number of Athearn GP40s painted in the B&M McGuinnis blue bird scheme. Floquil B&M blue matched the Athearn factory paint perfectly, so I just painted over the numbers I wished to change.
To do a full paint strip I have used 90% Isopropyl alcohol from the drug store. It took some hours but got it all off after a bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush. I have also just repainted some cars without stripping the old paint. Rattle can red auto primer will cover anything and makes a fine boxcar red.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
I've renumbered a few cars. To remove the numbers, I use either a pencil eraser, a tiny amount of rubbing alcohol, or the back of a hobby knife. After drying the area, I use some water to get the sticker to slide off the back. I then get the letter with tweezers and gently place on the car. To avoid air bubbles, I lightly touch the sticker on the car with a dry paper towel.
I usually wouldn't bother to re-letter parts of an existing car, as I find it better suits my needs to strip them completely. I'd guess that I've done so to about 90% of my rolling stock...about 360 cars. At least half of them were bought "used", and with roadnames or paint schemes not of interest to me.I did, however, recently buy two r-t-r hoppers (I'm not a big fan of r-t-r, as it seldom is) and both had the same road number...
As you can see by the modifications already made, it wasn't, in my opinion, ready-to-run.
I thought that the original lettering was done rather nicely, though, so I used an X-Acto #17 blade to gently scrape-off the numbers from both sides and both ends of the second car.
I was doing 12 mostly similar cars, so I'm not sure which of these is the factory painted one, but with new numbers done with decals...
For those that you wish to strip of both lettering and paint, I've found Super Clean to work fairly well on both plastic and metal, without harm. Usually, you need strip only the body shell, not the underframe or running gear.I put the body shell in a sealable container, and let it sit for a few hours (or days) until the paint begins to blister, and can be coaxed off using a toothbrush.
This one's not tall enough for the passenger car, but can be done in two phases, with the container open, as Super Clean is not especially volatile...
For metal, especially brass locomotives, I use lacquer thinner, in a sealable canning jar, like the one shown below...
After the paint has all been removed, wash the shell with not-too-hot water and dish soap, rinse thoroughly, then set it aside to air-dry.
Wayne