they used either the 920-
21258 Proto 2000 wheelsets
or Intermountain 40050
wheels. (In the defense of
the local shop I had tried to
find wheelsets in, he had
neither type in stock when
we were trying different
wheelsets that day).
Lettering
To get the lettering I needed
for the car names that were
not available, I scanned the
lettering on the sides of the
cars using a flatbed scanner and built decals. Using the extra
cars I had bought, but were not part of the historical consist,
I was able to scan every letter but one. I had to build an “H”
in Photoshop by using parts of other letters. The rest of the
car names I was able to piece together, letter by letter, using
scanned letters.
My first attempt was to paint over the numbers and names
with a yellow that matched the cars. That didn’t work, so I next
tried to scrape off the new paint and the lettering. While this
worked, this left damage to the yellow paint underneath and
surrounding colors. I initially decaled them anyway and left it at
that in 2010. I was not happy with the results.
When I was testing some other cars on the Suncoast Model
Railroad Club, I mentioned my dilemma to Carl Marchand. He
suggested that I should have “erased” the names and numbers
from the cars. After the engine came back, I tried painting over
6:. The damaged paint. This
is an example of one of the
three cars that I tried to
rename and renumber.
6
