Is there such a thing as "too much of a good thing?" In this case, I ended up with three of the new Bowser SP&S RS-3's, but then I found out that the number of one of them already belonged to a BN green RS-3 that is active on my roster, which I had previously re-numbered from 4082 to 4072. And I had two copies of the new Bowser 4077. What to do? Having watched Tim Taylor successfully renumber a few of my other locos, I decided to take the plunge and see if I could do it.
The first thing was to decide what new numbers to use. We are fortunate to have online photo archives now, so you can just search the web for a particular loco number and see photos of it. I also consulted my 1973 BN Annual to find out which loco numbers were still on the roster in 1973. The decision was to renumber the extra 4077 to 4067, and the redundant 4072 to 4075.
Having decided that, the project involves two steps - the numbering on the side, and the numbers in the numberboards. For the first step, I used some "Micro-sol" and a toothpick to gently wipe off the one number that I planned to change on each side of each loco. I didn't have any decals of numbers the right size or dark color of the numbers I was removing, but I did find I had a dry transfer set with black numbers approximately the right size. So I rubbed the dry transfers on, as you can see in the photo above.
For the second step, I also didn't have numberboard number decals the correct size, but the standard BN numberboard numbers, while slightly bigger, are close enough to do the job. So I carefully cut out the 5's and 6's that I needed, dipped them in water to remove the backing, and placed them on top of the existing number to be changed, wetting the area with micro sol before and after. Standard decal procedure. It was painstaking, but eventually finished. Now I plan to go back and apply micro set if needed to smooth the decals down, after the initial application dries in a few hours. Then later I can consider a layer of dullcote to seal the deal. And some pan pastels after that. You can count on seeing these beautiful looking and sounding locos in action in future videos on my YouTube channel. In the meantime, you can see a quick "Short" video of the three RS-3's on YouTube here.
The bottom line - don't be afraid to purchase more than one copy of a loco that you really "need" for your roster, and renumbering one or more of them. If I can do it, you can do it...
