Large Scale Central

Tanks A Lot

Sometimes you just have the Grumps. I find, however, that people give me more grumps than my trains in most occasions and incidents, which is good considering hobbies should BE therapy, not the reason you NEED therapy.

Ages ago (years) my best friend of mine suggested relettering a GRAMPS tank car in any scale to say GRUMPS instead. Not readily knowing if this has already been done, and acquiring an old possibly-1980s Bachmann tanker recently, I decided to take up to the challenge, in G scale. The immediate task was masking of lettering and data I wanted to keep, and then hitting it with flat black spray paint. Big stenciled A’s and stripes have suffered direct hits and are wiped out.

Using that stencil I drew and cut to dimensions (who needs decals anyway), I applied big U’s in their place. This one came out quite nicely to start.

The other side however was a mixed bag, and I think somebody in the railroad’s paint shop got startled and shifted the U stencil to the left. The sharpening afterward also was slightly overrun on the bottom, but the other side again had better luck and cleaned up nicely, particularly along the top.

I was ready to weather the tanker so nature’s wrath would beat up the lettering anyway, and did so days later.

Nothing like a good messy weathering for an industrial liquid hauler.

Sealed and nicely muted with the usual Krylon Matte finish, and now a companion to my roster’s other 4 axle tanker, which is a curious off/eggshell white thanks to a late grandfather.

The white tanker is the first large scale freight car I ever weathered, and was the host of a very watery streaking session.

For those curious, that logo bolted onto the side is that of my late grandfather’s corporate business he once owned that specialized in oil pipe and fittings. It is also newer in production than the black tanker that now joins it, with stiffer non-warping railings and slight mold changes.

Easy and goofy, and an homage to my back and forth interests in D&RGW. Having ridden upon the Cumbres & Toltec the other month errantly, and seeing a real GRAMPS tanker all rusty and weatherbeaten likely sealed the deal in my mind.

Please feel free to share your customized tank cars if you’d like.

Nice weathering! I guess you can now do “Grams”. However, I think I’ve seen that done before. Great story about how the “Gramps” cars came to be. Thanks for sharing.