Lettering

Very Interesting; keep us posted. I find "decals" a lot harder and are often too "old" even though purchased in its regular packaging - they tend to be brittle and break apart even though they look good at first. This concept might make things easier.

Interesting Idea!

I too am looking forward to your results.  Please post some photos after you get a chance to experiment!  This is why I dig model railroading... always more than one way to get a job done!

Lettering

I was hung up on lettering my rolling stock for a long time.  Eventually I bought some decal paper and a "decal finishing set" from Micro-Mark.  After designing/printing a few heralds and number sets in black on my home HP printer, I was surprised how easy it was to apply them, and how good they looked when properly finished.  That worked fine for grey cars, but the problem was then printing in white on dark red cars.  I tried a light yellow on my printer, but couldn't get it opaque enough to look good on dark red car sides.  Fortunately, a friend of mine acquired an old printer he loaded with white ink.  I emailed him a file of lettering, heralds and numbers, and got back a sheet of decals in opaque white.  A couple of the photos on my website show cars I've lettered this way. 

BTW, since there's no "official" shade of boxcar red or grey for my fictitious railroad, I pay no attention to how Bachmann On30 cars are painted/lettered when I acquire them -- cars with the least popular paint/lettering schemes are usually cheaper to buy on ebay than unlettered ones anyway.   I remove the trucks, use a can of spray paint from Walmart to overspray them, touch up the grab irons, brake wheels, and a couple of other details with common hobby acrylics, and apply my decals.  Some day I'll get around to weathering, but for now, I'm happy that most of my freight cars have been painted and lettered, quickly and cheaply, for the ACE, and that they look "good enough" to me. 

Of course, if you're wanting to letter cars for a real railroad using commercial decals, that might not work so well if the decals are old.  Good luck with the rubber stamp idea -- it seems like a creative solution to a common problem. Let us know how it works. 

Sandy http://www.sandysacerr.com