Attn: Union Pacific Modelers

I recently purchased two HO Athearn RTR Union Pacific AC4400s decorated in the ‘Building America Scheme.’

I would like to renumber both locomotives and redecal the flags. The factory stamped flag has visible paint lines on both units.

  1. Is the Microscale set no.87-1150 correct for these locomotives? Or, is their another decal more suitable?

  2. What is the safest way to remove the existing numbers and flags on the Athearn RTR shells without removing any of the UP Armour?

  3. Can anyone point me towards a good modeling resorce for modern UP lcomotives? I would like to add a modest level of details to these units.

Thanks and Happy New Year,

Erik Fiske

I could not fix your brakes, so I made your horn louder

What do you mean by “lines?” Gaps around the hood doors, raised edges to the paint finish, or?

Removing the flags sounds like a tricky job if you want to preserve the underlying factory yellow. Would it be possible to decal over the existing flags, or is the shape/size/underlying texture off enough that it won’t work? You may be able to cut the decals into pieces and use them to fill in. I’ve had pretty good success using a very small brush to paint around lettering gaps in situations where a full repaint wasn’t desired and decals wouldn’t necessarily have worked. Keeping excess paint under control is a must though.

It may be a plan to mask and then grit-blast the flag and numbers off the models (if you can get access to somebody who has a blaster) and then repaint the affected areas. Otherwise careful use of a sanding stick (i.e. a narrow strip of sandpaper wrapped around a the beveled end of a piece of stripwood) may do the trick.

WP8-

What do you mean by “lines?” Gaps around the hood doors, raised edges to the paint finish, or?

The paint stamp of the flag did not cover portions of the shell around the cabinet doors. There are vertical stripes of Armour Yellow around the cabinet doors.

I’m trying to avoid removing the Armour Yellow paint; sanding/blasting is hopefully an option of last resort.

Are there certain solvents that would be ‘less aggressive’ in removing only stamps/decals, and not the underlying Armour Yellow?

The vertical lines you are describing appear on the real locos in all AC4400 (numbers 5662 through 6075) pictures I see on the LocoPhoto site.

Martin

I looked at photos on the Fallen Flags site. the vertical lines appear to be white on clean (freshly painted) locos but grey to almost black on weathered locos. I also looked at photos of the model. It appears a grey wash to accenuate the lines would work.

Nice eye Martin and thank you for the link. I thought the lines on my models were a quality control issue. The devil is always in the details. Great pics for weathering and appliance detail placement.

Any ideas on a specific product that can remove the Athearn number paint without damaging the underlying Armour Yellow?

Erik