For the cost of the paint you've enhanced you collection's appearance and given a vision of what a complete restoration might look like. I would offer this to give you a better shot at securing funds to stabilize other equipment. Nobody can call the cars an eyesore at this point. Well done.

For the cost of the paint you've enhanced you collection's appearance and given a vision of what a complete restoration might look like. I would offer this to give you a better shot at securing funds to stabilize other equipment. Nobody can call the cars an eyesore at this point. Well done.

Before we get off of this subject completely, I thought I'd include a photo of our MDT 14070. This car was "cleaned" quite a few years ago and the MDT paint has held up very well. One thing we did not do however, was a good job of matching the paint on the very badly pitted door. From the hints given in this thread, I'm going to try again!

It's quite possible your painter did a good match. The discoloration there looks like fading, which comes from cheap organic pigments in the paint. There's very little you can do about that, unless you are rather sophisticated at buying paint AND willing to drive into the big city to buy it. That said, even discolored paint is worlds better than rusty metal, as it is a lot easier to prep.

We have two MDT ice bunker steel refrigerator cars at Hoosier Valley and fortunately, have been able to just clean them to make them presentable.

Hey Les, what did you use to clean off the grime from your MDT car?

-otto-

Otto,

Is the lettering Vinyl or did you use the vinyl as a stencil and paint the markings (to avoid the shrinking vinyl problem)??

Great job either way.

Rich C.

Vinyl lettering all the way.
-otto-

That was a mistake.