Lettering?

[Ray Dunakin]

What do most folks use to letter their locos and rolling stock? Decals, dry transfer, adhesive vinyl? And whatever your choice, where do you obtain custom lettering/logos?

[devils]

I use dry transfer and then seal it with varnish, I can only suggest you check magazines or the net for custom makers. In the UK I get a single colour A4 sheet for about £30 GBP from a master sheet created in microsoft word. They last for ages as long as they are kept flat.
Search google under railfont if you need some railway style fonts

[kstrong]

I'm very fond of dry transfers. They're not the cheapest to use, but they're dead-nuts simple to apply. You cut them from the sheet, place them on the model, rub them in place, and presto! You've got lettered equipment. They're flexible, and settle down over rough shapes such as rivets, grooved siding, and other common things with relative ease. They're also very easy to distress, should you have a model that requires such treatment.

There are a few folks making Dry Transfers specifically for large scale trains, including CDS (in Canada) http://www.tmrdistributing.com/CDS.htm or DJB Engineering (in England) http://www.djbengineering.co.uk/ . I don't know if these guys still do custom work or not. For custom work, there are still a few printers in the US which do custom dry transfers. Alpha Graphics www.alpha-g.net or Art Related Technologies www.artrelated.com are two shops to which I was referred. They're not cheap--you're looking at between $70 - $100 per sheet, but you can probably get 8 to 10 cars' worth of graphics on one sheet if you plan well enough. I've not used either shop myself--but will likely be putting together some artwork this summer for production.

Decals are my second choice, but distantly. I'm not a huge fan of applying them--it's a black art no matter what the books say. I fight with them on every model to which I apply them to get them to set down properly with no air or "silvering" behind them. Quite honestly, the only reason I use them is because I can print them up myself on my home computer. Can't beat that for creative flexibility, and there's no way I can justify spending $70 for lettering a single locomotive with dry transfers.

You can print your own decals on an ink-jet printer, with the only caveat being you can't do white lettering. You can do logos and such on white decal paper, and cut them to shape, and some folks have had very good luck printing "negative" decals, where what's actually printed is the background to match the color of the paint on the model. (Easiest with black models, but I've seen excellent examples of maroons and greens, too.) This is generally applied over a patch of paint the desired color of the lettering, which will show through the clear part of the decal.

You can also get a thermal wax transfer printer such as that which used to be made by Alps. These have the advantage of being able to actually print white and metallic colors such as gold and silver. You can still find them on ebay from time to time. (That's what I use to produce my decals.)

There are a few folks who own these kinds of printers who do custom work. One I would recommend is Stan Cedarleaf in Arizona.
http://gold.mylargescale.com/StanCedarleaf/WebPageDecals/CustomDecalsx.html

Again, I've not used his services personally, but I know lots of very satisfied customers.

Vinyl letters are a third option, and while I'm not entire enamored by them, they definitely have their place. As for ease of application, they're somewhere between dry transfers and decals. They're basically very thin stickers which you have to peel off the sheet and place on the model. They're very durable, but cannot be be cut to small font sizes much below 3/16". I've also had trouble keeping them seated securely around rivets and other bumpy details.

Later,

K

[Anonymous]

This is something i am interested in and know very little about. I would like a "Kawana Island Tropical railway" sticker for all my rolling stock, in green. But you need to pay about A$174.00 to get started and Doreens not keen on that!


Rgds Ian

[kimbrit]

Kevin, thanks for the djb engineering link, I live here and didn't know about them! I have just ordered £40 worth of dry lettering which will keep me going for some time.
Kim

[Anonymous]

Kim, what will Gail say? $40 X 2.25 = A$90.00 but i guess this is not as bad as A$174.00

Rgds ian