decals

When equipment is sold to another railroad, the buyer will often paint over the car with the new owner's official colors. Sometimes, the original owner's logo and paint shows through, giving us a clue as to the equipment's heritage. The same effects can be seen when a railroad upgrades its official paint scheme as can be seen here on this former Chicago and North Western Railway hopper. The old and larger CNW logo outline is clearly visible under the new and smaller logo, which thankfully has not been itself painted over yet. This car and another of CNW heritage were spotted behind the MG&E power plant in Madison, Wisconsin today.

Unless you're modeling equipment straight out of the paint shop, it's OK if your decal is chipped. It happens on the prototype too, like this UP locomotive passing through Rochelle in 2005. A lot of railroads use large scale "decals" of their own to apply uniform lettering and numbers on their equipment, and their decals chip just like ours do on our models.