General Discussion (Model Railroader)

I have several (18) HO scale C&O USRA 55 Ton Coal Hoppers that have duplicate numbers.  The build dates are 1919. 

How do you go about changing the numbers so they can all be used at once? 

Bill

 I use a little non-acetone fingernail polish remover and a pencil eraser to remove part of a number. 8 to 3 or 5 or 6 or 9, etc.

 I had good luck just painting over the old number and redecalling onto the paint.  The secret is getting a good color match to the existing paint.  In my case a jar of B&M blue matched the Athearn B&M paint scheme very well. 

  I have tried various things to erase/remove numbers but I can't say that any of them worked very well.

 Not sure how they did things back in 1919, but today a simple patch job would look appropriate.

Lee

Bill54:

How do you go about changing the numbers so they can all be used at once? 

Texas Zepher:

Depends if you want to keep prototypical numbers or not.   I've been on operationally oriented layouts where the owner just appended an additional digit to the number.  I know this wouldn't work with 18 cars, but you could erase one digit and then append two.....  The numbers would be entirely unprototypical though.

There is a good chance the model wasn't prototypical in the first place.  The model is likely prototypical, but the model and its details might not be correct for the lettered railroad.  For instance, the road numbers for Red Caboose models of GS gondolas of Sacramento Northern might be correct for SN-owned gondolas, but they are the wrong version of prototype GS gondolas.

Mark

 I use the walthers decla setting solution. I use a small amount on ht enumbers then with a sharp hobby knife I lightly scrap off the numbers then wipe off the excess liquid with a paper towel. It depends on what manufacture they are, they are printed on and usually have a ridge of ink. Some have a higher ridge than others. Also don't leave the solution on to long cause it will soften the paint below. Then I use decals that match as close as possible to the orig. numbers.