Advice on passenger car lettering

It sucks when you get no reply huh??  Anyway the way to get the emblem off is by Mr clean magic eraser. Go slow and keep it moist with a little rubbing alchol. it will leave a slight dull spot though. as for lettering above the windows or below which ever really you choose.as for lettering there is rub on leters or decal paper that you can run in your pc printer to make your own. other than custom made ones and for three cars not worth it.

I'lll give the magic eraser thing a try tomorrow .   Thanks for the tip.

I've used both magic eraser and 3000 grit wet sand paper. The wet sand goes significantly faster, but you need to be significantly more careful, because you can go "too far" sooner. 

I've printed my own decals using paper purchased from Amazon- The clear paper works great, the white paper seems to be extraordinarily fickle, and sometimes hard to work with. I would actually mask an area, paint it white & apply the clear paper before I used the white paper again. 

Good luck & have fun with it,

Looking at your photo again, with the nice cream colored car, you wouldn't have any reason to buy the white paper. This should be a fun & not too difficult project!

FWIW-
If you've never printed & decaled before, practise on something. Get some microset & microsol. I would even go as far as purchasing one of the Menards box trucks, and painting the box the same color as your cars. The box has a real nice large surface as a practise area. If it turns out well, he has a box truck for his layout. If you totally flub the who thing, microsol the decal off & try again. Easier to practise on the big surface then the small car.

Print your decals in a word document, you can scale it exactly to the size you need.

Personally, I would letter "Stephen Express" above the windows, and put the car names below the windows, or letter "observation" or something below.

Well, the only train that made it around the tree was indeed the Stephen Express. Not a commercial quality job by any stretch of the imagination, but perfectly acceptable for a soon to be 3 yr old.

I present to you, the Stephen Express,  made from a repurposed set of MLB passengers cars.  A little bit a paint to cover the MLB symbol, and some labels over the Phillies symbol, and away we go. 

I definitely think the lettering would have looked better above the windows, but given limited time, and a commercial label maker I think they came out okay for a first effort.

banjoflyer posted:

Nice job. He will treasure them as Dad did the work himself!

Merry Christmas!

Mark

Thank you.  (I'm currently in the living room rocking chair with him at 2:53 am.  He is still my get-up-at least-once-a-night-kid.)