Tip: Remove Lettering from (Some?) AZL Frt Cars

DISCLAIMER: USE THIS TIP AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! It has worked for me, but I have not tested it on a broad range of subjects to know if the results are consistent, or that it even works on any other AZL models. I will provide the best feedback possible as to what has worked for me, but just be cautious when attempting this on your models.

I recently purchased a 4-pack of AZL's 23000 Gallon Funnel Flow tank cars. They are decorated for Cargill with CGRX reporting marks, and they represent similar cars I spotted at the Frito Lay plant that I intend to model on my eventual Z layout. One of the cars I saw, while still a Cargill-owned car and carrying the CGRX marks, had the Cargill logo and "Cargill Foods" lettering painted over on one end, and "Vegetable Oils" (not present on the AZL model) painted over on the other end. I tend to dislike a lot of uniformity to my freight fleet other than for unit trains, so I thought this would be a perfect variation to model in Z. Here is an example of a car similar to what I saw: Cargill "Paintout" The particular car I saw did not have the lettering bleed-through that you see in this photo...I might be inclined to just paint right over the lettering for this one!

I recently discovered a tip--provided by Athearn on YouTube via their Facebook page--about removing lettering from their cars. I have been successful in using this procedure on some of my n-scale cars, and decided I would see if it would work in this case. Here's the Athearn link:




I'm happy to report that this treatment does indeed work on the AZL tank cars. A couple of notes:
1. I would recommend using more like an 8-10 minute wait time (or maybe even a tad longer) if the 5 minutes doesn't seem to allow easy removal of the lettering. (I find this to be the case for Atlas cars in N as well)
2. Be mindful of the seams on the side of the car. If not careful, you can rub the paint off of them since the paint tends to be applied more thinly in that area. The lettering should come off with gentle rubbing which should prevent this....this only happened on the side I did first for 5 minutes and I rubbed a little too hard. (Easily fixed with a fine tip black sharpie, btw) I would separate the tissue at the seams to avoid putting MicroSol on the seams entirely if I did it again.



So, note the missing logo and Cargill Foods lettering on the car in front. SUCCESS! I still have work to do, by recreating the patched-out areas. But that will happen once I get to the weathering stage and it will run like this for the time being.

This method also works for renumbering cars and/or changing reporting marks. I know that might seem a little tedious in Z, but could be worthwhile in some cases. Since I have four of these cars and really only need two for the Frito Lay service, I am contemplating the idea of stripping all of the Cargill logos, lettering, reporting marks, and numbers off to do another "spartan" tank car in another private shipper scheme. The more tedious dimensional data stays in place, and it only requires standard sans lettering from Microscale sets.

An update... I have successfully used this with the AZL corrugated gondolas as well. I bought a 4-pack of the MoPac's, and removed the MoPac buzzsaw logo on two of them. One will recieve a MoPac Eagle logo, and the other a UP shield.

I also tried this on Pennzee hoppers....to no avail. SO, Pennzee and MTL seem to be immune to this process so far.

Another semi-related update. Joe at MTL suggested using Camp Fuel to remove stubborn MTL lettering without *significantly* disturbing the paint underneath. So, I wanted to try this on a number of things and this week I had a chance to do just that.

First off, in case you don't know what I mean by "Camp Fuel", it's THIS: www.als.com/Product.aspx?pf_id=10254295&gclid=Cj0KEQiA5oy1BRDQh6Wd572hsfkBEiQAfdTPCvzLbX33xE6iBejPVXAuX0j1smBXLpG2fj5lV35ssywaAlJ78P8HAQ
(aka "White Gas")

I have some MTL Husky Stacks (BN and TTX) I'm trying to do this: www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/how-to-mtl-huskys-to-drawbar-units.31395/#post-399792 . Essentially, to make the drawbarred cars you need to remove the road numbers and Alpha designation from the center cars.

So, I'm happy to report that I was successfully able to complete this operation without destroying the paint on these cars. I'll post some pics when I have an opportunity. The process is very similar to the Athearn procedure but you have to keep reapplying the camp fuel to the tissue since it evaporates quickly. Once it has set for 5-10 minutes I start the process of carefully rubbing the lettering. It takes a lot longer than the AZL/Athearn/Atlas models do, but eventually it comes off and doesn't take the paint with it.

Unhappy to report that I tried it on the Pennzee cars and still no luck with removing the lettering there. To be continued...

As promised, a photo....

www.zcentralstation.com/index.php/media/gallery-3/archives/image?view=image&format=raw&type=orig&id=11615

The top two are AZL gondolas. I know they're foobs, but I bought a four-pack of the MoPac's on the cheap and they'll be fine until something better is acquired. The four pack came all in the MoPac "Buzzsaw" scheme, so I've removed the buzzsaw off of the panels on two of the cars. Following protoype photos of the cars I wish these were, I plan to put a UP Shield on one, and a MoPac Eagle logo on the other. Also, I am putting consolidated stencils on, (again emulating the prototype cars) which I applied already in this pic. (and will apply to the two remaining buzzsaw cars too) These cars will also be heavily weathered and beat up as well and two of them will get sand loads.

The covered hopper is my NP hopper that I have stripped of its NP lettering and reporting marks. Next I'll cut the roof and bottoms of the gravity feed hopper outlets, and fabricate ballast chutes and other detail before decaling for BN and heavily weathering the car.

And finally, I removed the UP shields off of a recently puchased AZL 60ft boxcar. I will ultimately renumber and change reporting marks to a leasing company as well. This just gives the car a more realistic/modern look as opposed to an out of the box UP scheme.

Been trying to figure out how to post a ZCS uploaded photo as an in-line forum pic but no luck, so back to trusty Google...here's the actual pic.

....Or not. Now Google isn't even working.

Well, at least here's another link... goo.gl/photos/FnBefiHE1urAvHyL8