New, undecorated box car. Oxide color right out of the box. Is there a problem with applying decals directly to the car without painting?
How good is the surface? Decals will go on smoother on a gloss surface, or at least semi-gloss. I would advise a coat of something after the decal sets, too, to protect it. For freight cars, I prefer a flat finish but I like my rolling stock weathered.
It’s a brand new car. Surface is smooth and a bit shiny but not glossy but I think it’s “raw” styrene, unpainted. I always use Dullcote after decaling but always on a PAINTED car so I wasn’t sure how decals would go on an unpainted surface.
I once made the mistake of decaling some unpainted cars, which were cast in a colour very appropriate to their prototype. While the decals went on okay, the setting solution, Solvaset, didn’t work all that well, with a great deal of silvering under most of the lettering. An overspray of Dullcote partially made them look a little better, but it very plainly showed that the lettering was done with decals, and not done very well at all.
I would suggest that you wash the car, using warm water and dish detergent, then rinse it thoroughly with water and let it air-dry.
Once it’s dry, airbrush it in an appropriate colour, then set it aside to let the paint dry/cure/harden, depending on the type of paint you use.
Once that is done, airbrush the entire car with Glosscote (or your preferred clear gloss) then let it fully dry until there’s no odour of solvent present on the car. Next, use a sharp blade to cut the needed decals from the sheet, keeping as far away from the lettering as possible. Once you have all of the required lettering free of the main sheet, use a sharp blade (re-sharpen or replace as necessary) and working on a hard surface (I use a sheet of glass on my work desk for this), to trim away as much of the blank paper from as close as you can maneuver the blade to the lettering, using a straight down chopping motion, rather than slicing it away.
The reason for this (and for cutting it from the sheet as far as possible from the lettering) is because slicing through the decal paper creates a raised edge on both sides of the sliced-cut, which later makes the applied decal more difficult to set, as its edges have been manually curved upward by the passage of the blade. Using a chopping motion has a couple of advantages, first that it allows you to position the tip of the blade as close as possible to the lettering, and second, that when you bring the blade down to make the cut, the chopping movement pushes the edge of the decal do
I have done this twice. Once was an Accurail refrigerated boxcar painted yellow and brown with the data in black. The other was an Intermountain tank car painted silver with the data in black.
Note: both these cars were factory painted with data, not just molded in color.
I had no problems with either one.
-Kevin
I’d actually be pretty surprised if it is raw styrene in an oxide red color. Does the interior of the car body look the same as the exterior (and if it does can it be scratched to make sure)? Or the underside of the running board if there is one.
I am aware that there are low-end trainset quality cars out there which are unpainted, and the lettering is added to the raw plastic. They are easy to spot because the raw plastic looks so waxy. But that quality of car is not offered unpainted as a rule.
Where the painted surface is slighty shiny I have had decent luck with decals. A genuine glossy paint or gloss coat is best of course, but I don’t like to add a layer of paint or gloss if I don’t have to. I have had luck, with small decals, using a tortillon (blending stump, shaped like a pencil but made of tightly wound-up paper) rubbed on the area I intend to decal - it smooths things out and adds even more shine. Then Solvaset or whatever, then Dullcoat, as usual.
Dave Nelson