A couple car types I like are tank cars and stock cars, and for both I was pretty out of options for decals. But having noted that K4 Decals are offered in multiple scales, I contacted them a few months ago and they were kind enough to make me a number of sets of their decals scaled to 1/76. Thank you! These are great decals! I tried to purchase enough to make it worth his time.

The first examples I have on cars are these three tank cars below, lettered for regional brands that appealed to me from the K4 online catalog, all certainly never before seen on an American OO tank car.

Kanotex S-C tank cars

I had two Scale-Craft tank cars that were almost ready for paint, which were completed (I used gloss black, Tamiya, and upgraded them to Schorr trucks). The Kanotex set fits this model like a glove! The decals were easy to apply on the gloss surface. It’s not visible due to the angle of this photo, but there are additional decals on the frame as well. These cars look great! I’ll be adding a bit of light weathering.

Marland Lionel tank car

For this car I wanted to try putting the decals directly on what remained of the original Lionel paint. Backing up a step, this Lionel model had only maybe 20% of the original decals remaining, but was otherwise complete. I thought the weathered look it already had would make for an interesting look on the layout, especially after weathering the car a bit more.

This Marland set can also work on an S-C car, but of the two sets I bought this was the only one that would work on a Lionel car. It was a little harder to apply the decals, and probably I should have at least sprayed it with a clear gloss before applying decals. But I got them on, and this is also a very striking model for an older regional brand, appropriate for the area of my freelanced lines.

As I was putting on the decals I also noticed something else — the reporting marks for Marland Refining are M.A.R.X. Oh my. Marx! I did not do that on purpose. So, I have something unique I guess — a Lionel 0045 MARX tank car, with a couple more Lionel/Marland cars on the way.

And I’ve got more decals

Besides tank car and stock car sets, I purchased a number of nice boxcar, reefer, and hopper sets. With the summer approaching, most evenings I can’t use my garage shop, and I have non-railroad projects to finish out there too (in the mornings), so I’ve retreated indoors to working on decals and other things. If you like doing decals, be sure to contact K4 and purchase a few.