Soda blasters

Before I went that route, I would try chemically removing the paint. Go to Walmart and buy a gallon of "Purple Power" degreaser (or equivalent). This stuff is an amazingly effective and gentle paint remover. Sometimes it takes hours and sometimes days, but it has ALWAYS worked for me and never caused any damage to metal or plastic.

I have had descent results removing unwanted lettering and graphics by using Solvaset and a Q tip. Be patient and gentle.

Ray

I can tell you what little I've heard.  Soda blasters are a fairly gentle method of abrasive blasting.  I would imagine they would take decals or printing off of painted items fairly quickly.  A baked enamel finish on a die-cast vehicle may or may not come off.  It might take the chrome plating off of plastic, and it may fog (etch) clear plastic windows.

Once again, this is based on what little I've heard and what I assume may result.  Hopefully somebody will chime in with some actual experience using soda blasters for modeling purposes, as I would also be interested in learning more.

I would use soda to take trains down to the bare metal. Probably not great on plastic bodies, unless you go really slow (which you can do with this material). Much more finesse than abrasive grit, so you can limit the amount of erosion by careful motion of the stream.

Jim

I'm am pretty sure that any blasting, soda or otherwise, will certainly kill your clear plastic windows and headlight lenses!  I've used glass bead blasting on plastic boxcars, but it can get away from you and take off more than paint.

SolvaSet and fingernail polish remover haven't done much on most of the cars.  I'll take them apart before stripping them. The soda blasters are quite expensive for the few items I'd use them on.

I HATE dilemmas!

Finger nail polish remover is mostly acetone. Not really up to modern paints. I would try lacquer thinner next. If that doesn't work then methylene chloride. The latter stripped modern Lionel paint when lacquer thinner didn't. Obviously the parts you don't want damaged like windows and chrome bumpers/mirrors have to be removed first.

Pete

I've got a Central Pneumatic Model 99636.

I've never been able to stop it blocking up.

Useless.

there is no need for blasting unless there are copious amounts of paint on a particular piece......this has been discussed in another thread about repainting locomotive bodies I believe. scuff original finish with grey scotchbrite , blend out any painted on artwork with fine sandpaper, 600 grit or finer, apply primer, scuff the primer to  a uniform finish and paint away. grey scothbrite will not harm fine details....blasting small models like we all work with may lead to disastrous results if you never used such equipment. sometimes I don't even bother with primer if the piece I'm working on scuffs out nice and uniform. no better substrate than the factory finish to work on top of.