In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra

It's been a long time since I've painted or decaled any models.  I have a couple of engines that need to be painted and decaled, but I've been putting it off.  There are a couple of reasons why: First, I have a spray booth I built that is just missing a blower motor (just haven't prioritized that purchase yet).  Second, I never have painted brass, let alone steamers, so I've been nervous about trying it.  Third, even though I've done it many times before, I have not decaled anything in a long time, so I feared I was out of practice and put off trying to do some.

One of the engines that needed painting and decaling was a Ma & Pa light consolidation that I had bought a while back.  I figured I needed just one engine of this class since they were not used too much on the Ma & Pa in the time frame I'm modeling.  A few weeks before we left for our trip, I found one of this class of 2-8-0s already beautifully painted on eBay, with the only problem being it was painted for a private road name.  You find that's common with this particular model as it was produced over a period of years by Akane, Atlas Industries, and finally, United Scale models and imported towards the end by PFM.  Many modelers bought them and painted them for various RRs as the engine is an attractive representation of an consolidation style of locomotive.   So, I theorized that if I bought this engine and changed the lettering and numbers to proper Ma & Pa RR ones, I'd save the trouble of having to paint it, or paying someone else to do it.  How's that for putting off learning how to paint a steam engine?  I know.. I feel ashamed.. Actually I don't.  ;)

Here is a picture of the engine as decorated for a private road name by the previous owner.  Yes, that is the wrong box.  I've seen a bunch of these engines being sold on eBay with this wrong box.  I don't know why.

Here I used Micro Sol to soften up the old decals so I could remove them.  This method works best with equipment that has been lettered with decals.

Here is how it looks after I removed the number from the cab.

This is how the entire engine looked after about an hours worth of work removing all the numbers and lettering.

Maryland & Pennsylvania RR #26 all finished except for weathering.

Here is the view of the left side of the engine.  What I love about the paint job the former owner did was he actually went through the trouble of painting the builder plates and smokebox number plate!

This turned out to be fun, and I think the re-numbering and re-lettering job came out real nice.  Just the relaxing type of project I needed to help me unwind this week after a hectic start to the new school year.