Making Custom Decals

 

Decals made with Inkscape, for Sandersville's discontinued 50' foot boxcars.

At the beginning, I bought a whole lot of rolling stock without really knowing what I was getting or why. The ten Lifelike coal hoppers and six 50' boxcars, all of fallen flags long gone, are a prime example of this. In my defense, they were like $6 each (which in US and UK terms is roughly $3.70 and £3 respectively) - so why wouldn't you?

But as time has gone on, I've found out about reporting marks and 'periods' of US RRs and realised that none of the Lifelike stuff would be considered prototypical for this SAN/NS MRR (don't get me wrong, if I see something I like, I'll probably buy it anyway.... oh, look, shiny!)

Had some old gondolas of various fallen flags which are a very close match to a couple of NS series cars, so they'll get stripped and get new decals.

With a resale value of close to nothing (not worth the time listing them for sale) and because they run OK, and because I've already weighted the boxcars to NMRA standards, I decided to make up some decals.

What could possibly go wrong?

I loved the old Atlas 41665 hopper for ECC but couldn't find any others.

So, this was a slow dawning, not a flash of insight. For weeks I'd go searching for Sandersville rolling stock and decals, and watch videos of rolling stock around SAN and found there wasn't much in n scale on the market. Then I remembered I'd got some decals made up locally a few years back, for some wargames figures.

Researching the ECC leased hoppers using RRPictures turned up a different paint scheme for the hoppers, to the one Atlas made. Also, using the photos, even though ECC is gone and the cars have been roughly painted over, I realised there were quite a few cars leased to and painted for ECC.

I went for it and didn't stop at the old SAN boxcars. 

I made decals for ECC hoppers and ordered the same model so that 41665 won't feel so lonely on the track. I made up some RBOX stencils and some more recent paint schemes for a run of random hoppers purchased recently.

Using RRPictures again turned up some recent paint schemes for the random hoppers I 've just bought.

What I didn't account for was the hours and hours of measuring, remeasuring, studying the prototype, and remeasuring again. And the fudging of different fonts that has had to happen because I don't have the right railroad fonts.

For the cars I already had, I was able to better gauge the dimensions of certain lettering. Some cars I just couldn't get a clear view of what the lettering said and I have had to fudge this too.

Speaking of fudging, the 'D' on the Sandersville boxcars had a square stencil in the middle, so I had to decide on the paint colour for the cars (Tamiya Dull Red) and use the swatch from the Internet of this colour to 'stencil' out the 'D'.  Also, I couldn't make half a circle as per the ECC globe so have gone with a full circle that will have to be cut out during decaling.

Various RBOX stenciling I could find from photos.

The other thing that became apparent while researching the photos and car models, was that the Lifelike cars weren't to any particular prototype model, so accuracy was never going to be a thing. The same could be said for the Atlas hopper, as its not the hopper model leased by ECC.

I guess 'close enough' is good enough for me. If this works, I'll have strings of custom rolling stock for the Sandersville MRR. If it doesn't, I'll just redo the measurements and try again.

And with nearly a full A4 page of decals, they've been sent to the printer. He requires SVG files that Inkscape can produce and will then take my stuff and redo it so it prints properly - including the white.

In the meantime, I've stripped the rolling stock using Isopropyl Alcohol at 91% IA/9% water, with good results - after 45 minutes, most of the paint just came right off and leaving some overnight for the more stubborn paint, did no damage to the plastics whatsoever.

A couple of the cars after stripping.

I guess, watch this space...