Fertilizer Hopper Build

I got a couple new things in the mail over the last week or two, meaning I have all the components for a small project. The fertilizer plant on the River Valley Central will receive dry products by rail and ship out local orders by truck. I picked up an MTL ACF hopper wearing Souther Pacific and some Oddballs decals to make a hopper that's not something you can just go buy. Not that there's anything wrong with RTR, but sometimes it's fun to roll your own.

This will hopefully be a quick and easy build, though it got off to a bit of a rough start. Originally the plan was to get any gray MTL ACF hopper, wipe the letters off, decal, weather just a tiny bit, done. I don' t know what's changed since last time I renumbered an MTL car but the pad printing was not coming off without taking the rest of the paint too. Matter of fact, the gray paint wiped off almost instantly when the rubbing alcohol touched it and the black letters didn't budge. Not huge, but I guess I'm not going to decal this thing tonight. Instead the whole thing took a soak in alcohol for about an hour or so. The alcohol stripped that thing naked. I mean totally bare, with only a slight touch from a cheap tooth brush to scrub the end frames a bit. That's all for tonight though, repaint will have to happen another night.