I have an older accurail car that I would like to remove the lettering whats the best method to use?

 
   While building a row of store front buildings for a small downtown scene on my layout, I noticed none of the two and three story buildings I chose had any visible means of access to the upper floors on the front of the building. Normally there would be an entry way door to one side or the other of the first floor business, but none of the buildings I have built have one. I have six different building models, not one has a door for upper floor access.  My buildings are all kits from either Woodland Scenic’s/DPM or Walthers Cornerstone. 

Every time I have looked at my layout and think about taking it apart, i have been kind of depressed.  Now I realize that in the new space — 1/2 a garage, I can do a lot of redesign to make it a better layout.  

On a nice sunny, warm couple of days, I experimented making some rusty pipes out of a couple sizes of plastic straws. Some straws were opaque black, others were translucent brown.

Here's brief description of what was done:
Sprayed the straws with either Walmart's "Color Choice" flat black or Rustoleum flat brown.