Model Railroading > Removing lettering.

Any suggestions as to the best way to remove factory lettering without taking the paint off also? I'd like to remove part of the lettering or road numbers and reletter or renumber. Suggestions please.

Test first in an obscure area with Brake Fluid. Borrow some from a car fan friend. Good Luck!

I have used Solvaset on Athearn units in the past with good success as Athearn uses an ink for its lettering. I don't know if this will work for other manufacturers. I too would appreciate knowing how to remove lettering from P2K, Atlas and Kato units.

Brake fluid works, and for small letters and numbers you can use a pencil eraser....Yes I said pencil eraser...use it carefully and it will do just fine....

I have had good luck using Solvaset or Champ Decal-Set. After letting it sit for four or five minutes, I use a pencil eraser to rub away the lettering.

This didn't work at all on a pair of P2K Wabash Geeps I needed to renumber- I ended up over-painting the numbers with a mixed-using-the-Mark-I-eyeball-method blend of Floquil, then decaling the new numbers over it. A goodly amount of weathering helped blend the whole mess in.

-fm

A friend suggested using Easy Lift Off. Anyone had any experience with this stuff?

Brake fluid is very harmful to KATO shells. They become very brittle. I learned that the hard way. Some paint thiners work but like on Life-Like shells it might remove the paint but leave numbers. That is what I read in one of my N-Scale magazines.

I renumber my Atlas and Kato units with PollyS Easy Lift Off. I apply this with a Q-tip, wait a few minutes then gently scrub off with the same Q-tip. Then I rinse the area clean with another Q-tip soaked in water. The base paint is unharmed, but has a shine to it. This makes applying new decals easier and the shine is gone after sealing.

rfan

In all my many years of removing cab numbers from various shells to renumber (Santa Fe), I have had good luck with Solvaset on some, and on others including Atlas and P2k, I have used Scalecoat paint remover on a piece of cloth, applied it to the number, then rubbed off, and rinsed the casting. As another reported, it leaves a shine that is a natural for applying new numbers. I did try the pencil eraser idea and found it will also work.

I have a freind who has good luck with fine scouring pads. I have tried this but went a little to deep.
One thing to remember: most dark colors like reds and browns are mineral based and will take a fair bit of abuse. Most light colors like greens, blues and yellows are organic based and will not stand up to alot of chemicals or scrubbing.
For example, it's quite easy to remove the lettering/numbers from a CP Rail loco but a little trickier on a BN unit. (experience talking hear...sigh)

To remove painted-on lettering by Kato, I use the following method:
Take a round toothpick and break off the point so you have a fairly flat surface to work with. In a small bowl, mix a small quantity of rubbing alcohol and a drop of dish soap. Dunk the "working end" of the toothpick in the mixture and rub it over the paint you wish to remove. This may take several dunkings, and you will discover how much elbow grease to apply. You may also have to break the toothpick off a few times, in order to keep a clean rubbing surface. With UP paint schemes, you can still see a kind of imprint in the yellow paint after all the red has been removed (I think this may be due to the pressure of the "inking" device itself). Once you're satisfied that you've removed all the paint you need to remove, rub a little bit more of the mixture over the area (to suspend the paint and alcohol in the soap) and wash it off with hot water. If you have already replaced some of the painted on decals with plastic ones, be careful not to get them too wet, as they will come off!

You will also notice that this burnishes the yellow paint. To me, the burnished paint, being quite smoothe, looks much closer to a real UP paint job, as it knocks down all the imperfections in the paint. I just wish I had time to go over the whole locomotive with the toothpick method, rather than just the decaled areas.