GEC's Layout Progress

[acelaphillies]

Conrail SW1200 #9340

I finally bit the bullet and renumbered #9344 to #9340. I had sort of wanted to do that in the first place, but one of the minor "annoyances" of being in a model railroad club is that everyone has the same stock numbers! So far as I can tell, no one has offered a model of #9340 "as-is", so I should be set.

However, the real trick I learned this time, was to "wet sand" the numbers! I tried my normal approach of Solvaset and "hi-polymer" eraser to remove the road numbers on the cab sides. However, the result was that the paint wore away around the numbers before the numbers did! On the other side, I tried using really fine wet sand paper (like the kind I use to polish plastic car sides). While I did wear it down in a few places, the results were better than on the other side.

Fortunately, the Floquil Conrail blue I have was close enough paint wise.

At least now I can bring my SW1200 down to the club and use it freely!

I have also tried Solvaset and Scotch tape to remove factory lettering. I have heard that it works for some people, especially on Athearn stuff. However, when I tried to remove the Acela logos on my HHP-8 I would up taking off some paint. It seems like there are a handful of methods that all work ok but not great. Maybe I will try out the wet sanding approach. Factory numbered locos are nice and easy, but they do have limitations.