Here’s an easy two evening project.

I always liked the traditional buzz saw logo on the side of the cabs so in emailing Tom Austin for some suggestions he told me the Athearn lettering could be removed without damaging the paint. Tom also noted any GP38-2 2055-2135 in this series using the Genesis GP38-2 can be backdated. I didn’t want to renumber the unit so I left the number boards alone.

In fact Tom sent me a YouTube showing the process

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-elm-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=elm&p=youtube+athearn+lettering+removal#id=2&vid=a8f6edfcc86fc0e8d06fc81a6eebb074&action=click

All it takes a Micro Sol Red, a few Q-tips and a paint brush. I used two different brushes, one with stiff and the other with soft hairs. I had a factory painted Mopac 2117 which was a good candidate for backdating as all that is needed was move the bell from the top of the carbody to under the frame. The bell is a metal casting so I just removed it with some small pliers and plugged the hole. I’ll glue the bell to the frame after I finish weathering. Cover the front and rear inverted ‘V’ striping with the Micro Sol and let it sit for a good 5″. You can then take the Q-tips and brush and lift off the white striping. The Eagle logo on the side of the cab came off down to the original blue paint but it took a little more work as there’s three colors to remove (white Eagle, red buzz saw and blue rectangle) but all three layers came off.

I couldn’t get the striping on the side of the walkways to budge (probably just impatient at this point) so I did cheat and airbrushed over it with Tru-Color Jenks blue but first I added masking tape over the trustee stenciling, the builders plate and the small ‘F’. Tamiya Clear was airbrushed over the sides of the walkways, front nose, rear nose, top of carbody and sides of the cab so I had a glossy surface for the Microscale decals to adhere to. After the decals are dry I’ll go over the entire locomotive with a light coat of Dullcote for my weathering processes. When applying the inverted ‘V’ striping Microscale has the two V’s on the same clear backing; to get the stripe through the handholds I had to cut these apart and cut them as close the the white decal as possible as they need to butt up against the wire handholds. I initially used the blue Micro Sol to place the decals but used the red to get them to conform to the plastic details and hide any clear carrier film.

Microscale set for the 3″ striping and buzz saws
87-74 Missouri Pacific Diesels (1962-1974)

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