Hi guys,
25 years ago when I lived in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, our house was located about half a block from the mainline of the Rio Grande. My nephew and I watched lots of trains roll through town at the time. Back then, the Grande hauled lots of unit coal trains.
Some guy who went by the name “Waterbed Lou” was pretty good about tagging lots of the Grande’s black coal hoppers with his distinctive signature. At some point we started looking for his tag and date on the coal trains we watched. Here’s one:
And another:
And yet another:
Last year I decided to try to add a “Lou” tag to one of my Grande hoppers. I imported the tag photo into AutoCAD and then scaled it to match the width between the car ribs. I then printed it on a piece of adhesive-backed film and stuck it to a car. I scribed Lou’s tag with a sharp #11 Xacto blade and removed the film. Finally, I wiped the scribed plastic with some thinned off-white acrylic paint and wiped away the excess paint. Here is the result on one of my hoppers:
Cheers,
Matt
