Attn Vintage N scale collectors.. Was this a somewhat common practice?

[learmoia]

I was entering my latest vintage purchases into inventory and ran across a Thermice Reefer car I couldn't read the number..

I took the lid off and got up close and noticed a shadow of another scheme under the base coat. 
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The same scheme is on both sides of the body and the bottom of the car shows signs of the previous orange color.
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For a second I thought it was a paint over /decal job because that is common.. But it is a factory paint scheme.. no decals.

I've noticed plenty of cars with various paint flaws... But I've never seen a car that was decorated - over sprayed and decorated with another scheme..

The previous scheme is SP-UP PFE

Thoughts? ~Ian

[learmoia]

Well I see what the paint flaw was.. Looks like someone double printed the logo..
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For those curious.. it's an AHM Reefer..

~Ian

[Point353]

Bev-Bel used to do that with some Atlas products.
I have a B&O loco that appears to have originally been painted Santa Fe.

Years ago, production runs were much larger, so it's possible that excess inventory was recycled by repainting it into a different roadname.

[Doug G.]

I've seen factory paint-overs before. Probably occurred when a manufacturer realized they needed more of a certain run and used already painted stock excess. Pretty rare, however.

Doug

[ncbqguy]

Is the car a standard AHM body.
I seem to recall that there were instances of AHM , Atlas and MiniTrix bodies showing up in the wrong paint and lettering and box.
Since the cars were all made by Roco maybe they ran short of AHM cars and had surplus Atlas or MiniTrix on hand and just did a repaint.  Or maybe they over ran one scheme and repainted the shells.
I think I have an example of a "wrong" 50 Ft mechanical reefer but never looked to see if it was a reprint or just the wrong shell.
Charlie Vlk

[learmoia]

Yes standard AHM body and both schemes are linked to AHM releases..

The photo in the following post, I tried to show the double stamp of the UP /SP logo.

~Ian

[Missaberoad]

More recently I had a Deluxe BNSF woodchip gondola that still showed the raised printing of the Great Northern scheme through the brown paint.

I imagine Deluxe over produced those first runs and used the excess for the later ones...

[nkalanaga]

Well, in a sense, that chip car is prototypical, as the BNSF cars were probably GN to start with.  "Ghost lettering" showing through as the new paint wears off isn't too uncommon, although most prototype lettering isn't thick enough to see through fresh paint.

[learmoia]

Well, in a sense, that chip car is prototypical, as the BNSF cars were probably GN to start with.  "Ghost lettering" showing through as the new paint wears off isn't too uncommon, although most prototype lettering isn't thick enough to see through fresh paint.

With the difference in paint things wear differently, ect... Unless you have a super thick overcoat.. in the right light, you can tell. 

That is alot of work for a MFG to produce that effect intentionally. 

~Ian

[NSEGeorge]

Ian-

Speaking as the producer in question, I can assure you that the BNSF overpaints were done because of the photograph of those cars as overpaints. I am a GN/BN/BNSF modeler, and I wanted to take the extra work to do it that way. Some of of our work in overpaints, renumbers, and repaints were just us trying to do something interesting and unique to follow our own modelers interests. Admittedly, not a good business practice, but being in the model railroad business, there is no such thing as a good business practice. You do this for passion, as the financial rewards are not enough for motivation.

The saddest day and the happiest day of my manufacturing life was selling deLuxe. It's too bad Dave couldn't make a go of it, but I am certain that Matt will do it justice.

[learmoia]

George, thanks for the input.. out of pure curiosity, how in depth did you go with your pre-decorating on the under paint?

Did you fully paint and letter GN (blue then major lettering) then overspray and decorate?. Or did you just pad print the GN lettering on the primer body and over paint to to get the logo shadow?

And I appreciate that your efforts were long before there was factory weathering and direct printing methods used today to produce similar results...

~Ian

[NSEGeorge]

Raw plastic, and big white printing. We reused the printing plates from the earlier GN run over plastic. We got the idea from having a batch of testing cars that we used to line up the pads, and either Steve or Craig noticed the outcome of lining up an earlier BN run that it looked cool and remarkably prototypically accurate, so we looked to formalize it after that. Since we had a huge lot of photos that showed the real thing, it made easy work of finding reference numbers to use. That photo library is something I wish I still had.

It led to the WP repaints, and the NP cars that became BNSF repaints with all of the coincident color blocks, and finally the factory weathered and rusted ex-SP cars that we did. It was fun to do things differently that inspired others to take it further.