stripping paint off Lionel locomotives

I recently acquired a Lionel 671 PRR S-2 turbine (6-8-6) with the Pennsylvania tender 2671W. A previous owner in their infinite wisdom had decided to hand paint the locomotive and tender bodies light green, and the trucks red. Any suggestions on what to use to attempt to get the green paint off without hurting the original black (and hopefully preserve the lettering/numbering as well)? The locomotive shell is of course metal, and the tender body is plastic. I've had success with MEK or Triple 1 before in removing paint-over-paint on metal, but don't know if I should try it on this. I'd like to restore it to original if possible, without repainting.

Thanks,

Cliff

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Cliff Gallup
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Any idea what kind of paint was used? You might be in luck if they used water based house paint or poster paint. The original Lionel finish was a chemical blackening process that was durable. You might start off with the gentlest paint removers and work up the scale until the stuff comes off. You might start with soapy water. Tide laundry detergent has a good deal of tri sodium phosphate (TSP) in it and will strip weakly put together paints. If you have access to an ultra sonic cleaner, a solution of water and Tide might do the trick. Or try a trip thru the kitchen dishwasher and see what happens. Next step up is straight TSP, available from hardware stores. If that doesn't do it, I might try isopropyl alcohol before stepping up to MEK which is very active stuff. Keep MEK away from anything plastic, it dissolves it. It will also dissolve linoleum floors. As a last resort, the hardware store paint removers will cut thru any kind of paint except maybe epoxy. They will also take off any lettering. I don't know what it will do to the chemical blackening, but it might not be pretty.

David J. Starr

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David J. Starr

Ok, thanks very much for the advice!

Cliff

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Cliff Gallup

(snip)

Not completely correct. The boilers on all Lionel postwar steamers were painted with a satin black baked-on enamel type paint, as were the die cast chassis for the Berkshires and Turbines. The die cast separate cylinder blocks, driver centers, metal truck sideframes, and some sheet metal parts were chemically blackened.

I'm afraid that any process that will to remove the added paint will affect the original Lionel paint surface underneath and leave uneven shades of black and/or surface texture. Even if you are successful in removing the added paint, you will have modified the original finish (adding and removing the over paint), so the piece should properly receive a TCA "restored" tag and should not be sold as a true factory original. That being the case, I'd just take off all the paint with a paste type paint stripper from the hardware store, and spray on a nice new even satin black finish. I find the strippers do not do much to the blackened parts and that if they do, the blackening can be restored with gun bluing compounds. GQ

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Geezer

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