Relettering a Walthers Proto 10,000 Gallong Tank Car

As I move through my pile of kits and cars to be redetailed or repainted, I sometimes stumble upon fruits that are so low hanging it would be criminal not to harvest them. An easy win is an easy win and for that reason, they should always be taken.

The story started with a set of Black Cat decals for a McColl-Frontenac Oil Company car. I had purchased it because I liked the name of the company, with Frontenac resonating with Quebec City a lot since that man of the 17th century was one of the most famous governor of New France. Frontenac Oil was a business based in Montreal that was merged with McColl & Anderson Oil in 1927. Their fleet of tank cars was in service until the very early 1960s. The company was partially owned by Texaco who became the main shareholder by 1941. In 1959, it became Texaco Canada until it merged with Imperial Esso in the late 1980s and became history.

While reading the instruction sheet, it was clear I would need a 10,000 gallons tank car. A quick search on the internet shown me a prototype picture of a McColl-Frontenac car which looked quite similar to a Walthers Proto one. I always thought the old Life-Like Proto 2000 tank cars were gems and since one in CNW OCS paint scheme was for sale at some Canadian hobby shop where I was doing some purchase, in the cart it ended up.

Factory painted car before modification

As with many relettering project, I knew it would be better to remove the old factory applied lettering and keep the original paint job. It would make it less likely to break details, particularly on such a delicate car. Fortunately, for a rare instance in my modelling life, the trick to cover the lettering a few minutes with towels soaked in Solvaset worked! Using a few cotton buds, I wiped the old lettering away until every little trace was gone. Sometimes, a few drops of Solvaset did the trick to remove the most stubborn remnants. In fact, it worked so well and so fast I was able to reletter the car only a few minutes after since the paint became extremely glossy and perfect for decalling.

The joy of erasing factory lettering with Solvaset

Black Cat indicates that the McColl-Frontenac name should be centered on the car, behind the ladders. However, the only available prototype picture online lifted up from Pinterest show the name on the right side. I felt it looked better and went forward with that. However, later during the decalling process, it occurred to me the Black Cat artwork was of a later version of the scheme while my prototype picture was from an earlier scheme that was used when the cars were built or acquired by McColl-Frontenac. The question raised was if I should redo the car with centered lettering or keep if on the right.

Early paint scheme (credit: unknown, Pinterest)

I have no answer with to that question. A discussion on Facebook with freight car gurus such as Ian Cranstone, Dan Del'Unto and others couldn't provide more prototype photos of McColl-Frontenac cars. The conclusion reached by all of them was that since no evidence was available to contradict my work and that I had, in good faith, followed a known prototype picture, I should keep it as is because it was an educated guess that made a lot of sense.

Completed car sitting on the feed mill siding.

So, after reaching that conclusion, I sprayed a coat of satin varnish over the car to seal the decals and restore the factory finish. I'm starting to really like AK Interactive satin varnish because it has that nice semi-gloss appearance so fitting for a brand new car. Until I weather it it the future, it will join the rest of the 1950s Monk roster.