One of the lionel gondolas i got was caked with dirt. I got some water and was washing it off when the paint ran right off with the water. Does any one know why this happened.
Water by itself should not have caused the paint to come off. Perhaps being caked with dirt for so long caused the paint to loosen and dissolve.
The dirt might have had a petroleum contaminant that loosened the paint. Hopefully it wasn’t a valuable car, now you can do a custom paint job and lettering.
Hmmm, seems kind of unusual to me. Usually it’s the lettering on the cars that is potentially the most suseptible to coming off under water. Did you use hot water by chance? And what car was it… could you read the road name and number of the car?
Many of the postwar gondolas (not all, but many) were of molded color. The plastic used by Lionel during the postwar years didn’t take paint all that well, so seeing the green NYC long gondola with paint chips is a common thing. During the early years of Lionel MPC, gondolas weren’t painted but had the color in the plastic itself.
Could it have been a K-Line gondola? Early K-Line cars were also molded with color in the plastic. Later, the longer 11 inch “classics” types were/are molded with white styrene and the paint can sometimes come off quite easily.
Thanks for the help. It is not a valuable car. I repainted it black but do not know if I want to Paint it in my own road name or a real road name. I could use Onion Pacific to avoid the Law suit happy U.P.
http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/licensing/index.shtml :
“These restrictions do not apply to in-home model railroad hobbyists who create Union Pacific-branded equipment for personal use.”
Great, maybe i will make it U.P…who knows. I have time to think about it.
I’m assuming that the piece that you’re talking about it a prewar tinplate piece. Most of them had a leaded baked enamel paint, which is fairly durable compared to other types of paint. It most definitely will not wash off normally under water.
It is not prewar tin plate. It is plastic after the war but i do not know what year