I recently bought a six pack of Accurail C&S hoppers made about 20 years ago. I already have a set of these on the layout, so I need to renumber the cars in the new set.
I’m not particularly a fan of how the Accurail renumber decals look when applied, plus they didn’t make renumbering decals for these cars so it would be hard to match the paint and decal colors anyway.
I tried using Micro Sol and a slightly abrasive brush, but that started taking off the paint, so then I switched to the method Accurail recommends - Mr. Color Thinner and a Q-tip. I just tried that, and the number comes off very easily, but not before the paint! Here’s what I wound up with on the first spot I tried:
Have you tried Solvaset and just a Q-tip rather than a slightly abrasive brush? It’s a slightly stronger solvent than Micro Sol but should be weak enough that it doesn’t take the paint off. It has worked well for me in multiple applications.
P&LE, Evans Coil Car, AHM/Taiwan, stock#5204B, first released in 1972
You’ve probably searched and found out about various methods. I may have mentioned some of them. In the end, you need a liquid that dissolves only the lettering and not the paint. Unfortunately, Psychot seems to be the only one who has shown a successful example with Accurail models.
It is true that in the real world, it is not acceptable for cars with the same serial number to exist. It is also unacceptable in the model world.
But if you change your mind, what’s the problem? Yes, there is nothing wrong with doing it that is less hassle and looks better. The only obstacle is the owner’s mindset.
I have many cars with the same serial number.
Cut a piece of toilet paper the size of the lettering you want to remove and place it over the lettering. Place drops of MicroSol on the toilet paper and let it sit on the lettering. Keep it wet and leave it on for five, ten, or even fifteen minutes, to let the MicroSol do its job. If the lettering is stubborn, leave it on longer. Use Q-tips and nothing abrasive. Different brands’ paint/ink will require differing amounts of soaking time/scrubbing. I’ve never seen MicroSol hurt the underlying paint, so fear not. Good luck!
Tried the Micro Sol for about half an hour. Didn’t affect the lettering at all (or the paint). Also tried 70% IPA. Not sure what to do now.
I might just try to match the body color with Vallejo paints, paint out the numbers and add new ones. Might not be too ugly…
A last resort would be to hold the blade of a knife perpendicular to the surface and slowly scrape away the lettering. Any rough marks can be smoothed out with a tortillon (blending stump or conte pencil).
I have used an old style typing erasure pencil to fade the numbers on Accurail cars. It is abrasive, so use only light strokes in a circular motion to fade the numbers to ghost like. Then use new decal numbers over the ghosted numbers. It is nearly impossible to completely remove the factory applied numbers without removing the paint in my past experience.
I have a set of Accurail renumber decals for CNW hoppers that turned out to be a pretty good match for the C&S hopper set, so I used them and just stuck them over the old numbers.
Not an exact match, but when weathered I think they’ll be good enough.
In my experience, any type of liquid that melts the white paint is going to also melt the brown paint before all of the white is removed, so I don’t use liquids. I resort to physical removal.
Scrape with a blade at 90 degrees or so. All painted lettering sits proud of the body color which creates an edge for the blade to pick. A curved blade works best, IMO.
You should be able to practice to hit the sweet spot of how to hold the blade so that proud color is being scraped off of the body color. I ALWAYS use vertical motion so that the inevitable scratches to the body color will blend in well with vertical streaks you apply when weathering the car later…
Well, I got all the CNW renumbering decals applied to the seven cars a couple days ago. I was ready to start weathering, so I tested a couple of cars.
I use a thin black wash for the first layer of weathering, with 70% alcohol being the carrier as it will wet the car body (a plain water carrier won’t). I know the alcohol reacts with t clear flat finish I used to apply to protect the decals, so I tried a satin finish to see how that would work. Same reaction.
Today I tried a gloss protective coat. It reacted even worse than the satin or flat coats did!
The number is completely obscured. I tried scraping it gently off with a knife, but that took the number right off as well (left the painted decal backing though).
I guess my next step will be to try the wash over the unprotected numbers, then after that dries I’ll add the flat finish to the decal. I’ll just have to be real careful and hope the wash doesn’t loosen the decal from the car body. I’ll do one car that way, and if it doesn’t work I guess I’ll have to skip the wash and just go with chalks.
Only thing is, the chalks don’t work nearly as well on the plastic body as they do on the wash. I suppose I could try adding the flat finish over then entire body…
Anybody have any other thoughts?
The decals (all four) are completely white! This surprised me a bit, as I understood that the alcohol reaction is with the clear coat, not the decal. Maybe the clear coats were actually protecting the decal from the reaction to some extent. Could it be I need to brush on an additional layer of the flat finish to protect the decal better?
These Accurail renumbering decals are old enough to be very brittle. To make them usable I brushed on Micro Scale’s liquid decal film (per Accurail’s instructions) prior to cutting out and placing the decals. Maybe the alcohol is reacting to the liquid decal film?
I was able to remove most of the whitish layer from one of the decals by carefully scraping the decal with an Xacto blade - enough to be acceptable for this car, if I can clean the other three decals as well. Here it is:
Most of what still looks white is just a reflection of the lamp above the car. The number is very readable.
I suppose I’ll try a water-only black wash on the next car, though I don’t think that will work out. Beyond that I’ll try adding the chalks without the black wash. If I scrub the chalks into the car maybe they’ll adhere well enough…
Any decal gurus out there that can provide insight into what I’m doing?
The 979 was before any weathering was done. It looked about the best of any of them. I could just go to the chalks without any sort of wash, but the chalks stick much better after doing the wash, so I’d rather not skip it unless I have to.
979 is far too pristine, as were the rest of them. They need to look semi-neglected, like they sit in a siding all year and are only used for a month or two in the fall (as they really were). Weathering is an absolute necessity on my layout.
It turned out the alcohol in the black wash wasn’t reacting with the dull coat. It was reacting with the decal film itself. I brushed on two coats of flat finish on each decal on the cars and then added the black wash. No white residue! There was some pooling of the black pigment on and around the decals because of the unevenness of the flat finish itself, but most of that cleaned off very easily.
Here’s the first car completely weathered an on the layout:
I don’t like the way the Accurail renumbering decals look, but the only alternative seems to be to strip the cars completely and repaint / reletter. This is good enough. I’ll get five of the remaining six cars done in the next day or so. The last car I have to put new decals on again, because I managed to scrape off the numbers from the decals when I was trying to “fix” it.
After applying decals, I use a spray of Tamiya flat finish using a spray can. I’ve never had any trouble with it reacting to the weathering applied later. How much alcohol did you use? If I’m doing a ‘wet’ weathering (with a wash) it’s usually like say a half a dixie cup of water with a few drops of acrylic paint and a few drops of alcohol or dish detergent - just enough so the water/paint mix flows and doesn’t puddle up.
Otherwise, for a coal-hauling car like this, I would do dry weathering. Spray to seal in the decals, then when dry, add powdered charcoal from an art store. You can test the amount, remove some here or there as needed. When it’s right, spray it with flat finish again. Unlike chalk weathering, the powdered charcoal doesn’t dissolve or disappear when sealed in.
One idea if you do have to repaint where the reporting marks (which is what the “serial numbers” are actually called) is to touch up the paint with a color as close as possible to the car’s color, reletter the “C&S” and the car number with decals, then seal it all in with flat finish. Then, put a bit of masking tape over the reporting marks, weather the car (heavily) and remove the tape. On real railroads, cars get dirty, and switch crews would sometimes take some ‘waste’ and maybe a bit of oil and clean off the reporting marks by hand so they could read them. The rest of the car could be very dirty.
