Removing Lettering from a Lionel Woodside Caboose

Great question Palallin,  for me (part time painter,  in fact it has been awhile),  I have had success depending on which manufacturer the caboose is you would like to re-paint.   I think Lionel and MTH have some pretty difficult paint to remove.  Without removing everything that is.

I had success with Goo Gone on a Williams brass caboose to re-letter with success.

Curious if any accomplished painters here on the forum have had success?

Mark

palallin,

I'm in the same boat, would like to reletter some of my tenders and cabooses as well.

A long time ago there was a thread on how to do this, but don't know how to find it.

Some have tried denatured alcohol and worked quickly to protect the paint underneath.

Hope you (and I) get some input on this project, thanks.

Gentlemen;  I've had success using Testor's Easy Lift Off, (ELO) to remove lettering from a MTH 18th Century Caboose that had significant wood grain.  It was the first time I used it and wasn't careful enough when applying it so where I had applied it directly to adjacent paint it lightened it up a little, not removed down to the plastic.  It was an easy repair with a brown sharpie.  I've used it on subsequent decal and lettering removals using a fine paint brush to apply to the lettering only and haven't had any issues.  I haven't tried it on a Lionel woodside caboose.

Joe

Safest to just use 400, then 600 wet sandpaper.  All you need to do is remove the edges of the lettering.  Then carefully mask the windows, etc., and spray on a new topcoat - color of your choice, and decal away.

I recently stripped paint from a MTH Railking 2-8-0 tender that was lettered Union Pacific.  With ALL the paint removed I can still see a "ghost" of the lettering on the plastic shell.  The lettering must be applied with a lot of pressure to make it "soak" into the plastic like that (pad printing?).

I've tried to remove just the lettering and in every case the base color has had some alteration to it (lighter, shinier, duller).

bob2s got the right idea.

Have not been able to remove their lettering without damaging the paint to just decal over it without a complete repaint. In many cases just used 1,000 grit paper and sanded the lettering off then completely repainted the item. Planning on doing a tender, looking for a solution that would not require a repaint.

I shall go out on a limb: there is no such solution, even for decals, and maybe even for press-on letters. Sorry.

Didn't SIRT post a thread about this very topic? He used a Mr Clean sponge of some kind. Just a thought.

That's what I used on mine. I still had to use a fine grit sand paper to remove what Mr clean could not removed. Good thing I was planning on repainting anyway.

On 3 rail engines I use acetone as it takes th lettering but doesn't touch the base paint.  I also did this on a kline Mikado and redecal it.  Worked great.