Hi everyone,
i'm looking for someone to make some of my private railroad decals. Since Rail Grahics shut down, I ordered a lot prior to the closing. I'm now running low, so I need more. Can anyone that can recommend a company that can produce them? Good news is they gave me the PDF file prior to the shutdown, so I'm ready for someone to print for me.
Thanks to all who reply.
Neal
I have not used them yet... Shawmut Car Service offers a custom decal service that can accept PDFs and they charge by the 8.5 by 11 sheet.
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I plan to have them print a whole sheet of slogans for me.
I ordered what I thought was a "lifetime supply" of STRATTON & GILLETTE decals from Rail Graphics before they closed, but now I am unsure if it was enough.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
tichy now is offering custom decals.
According to the guy who does the painting segments on brasstrains.com videos, microscale will do a custom run. You have to order a bunch though.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
BigDaddymicroscale will do a custom run. You have to order a bunch though.
Microscale will do a custom run for a small pattern for pretty reasonable costs if it will fit into the area normally cut out of their "Mini" decal sets.
The problem is that you need to wait until they are doing a run that uses the colors you need. If you are just printing one color, black, white, or yellow, that should not be a problem.
Minimum quantities are pretty high, and art set up fee is also an expense.
Getting them to do a full sheet of custom work is very pricey. If you were to consider this you might as well go all out and get Cartograf to make your custom decals. VERY pricey, but 100% worth it. Decals really do not get any better than that.
I have ordered from Bill brillinger:
https://pdc.ca/rr/custom_decals/
Great service, quickturn-around, excellent help, very pleased.
Circus City:
http://www.circusdecals.com/
Gets good comments on Facebook. I have no personal experience with their product.
A friend sent me four sets of custom lettering which he had made by Circus City Decals & Graphics.
They seem to specialise in small runs, with a quick turnaround. My friend also had them do the artwork, but you could save that cost by supplying your own, as you apparently do have it. I'm seriously thinking about getting a small batch (one 8.5"x11" sheet would be enough) in order to do some tender heralds and passenger car lettering for my Erie Northshore equipment. The yellow used in my friend's sets are a good match to the yellow C-D-S dry transfers I used to letter the locos, and a good match, too, to the paint colour which I mixed to match that lettering to make the stripes on The Bee, my diesel-electric doodlebug...
...and I'd originally left a space between the words on the tenders to add a small herald, but never got around to having them made...
My friend's decals are for a real railroad, for which he was operational manager before his retirement, and were intended for use on modern 50' boxcars.
Since I'm modelling the late '30s, I opted to use more appropriate cars (one for me and one for a mutual friend), and ended up using parts of all four sets, as I had to modify almost all of the dimensional data to suit the smaller Tichy cars...
The Kiski Junction never owned any reefers, so I guess that the cars are an example of modeller's licence.Since you can put as much lettering as you wish onto one sheet (make sure to leave enough space between items to facilitate cutting-out those items, though), this may be a viable option. If you need a lot of lettering, perhaps it's not so economical.
Wayne
Highball Graphics does custom decals; scroll sown the home page looking for Custom Decals Info and Pricing
http://www.mgdecals.com/homepage.htm
I have bought their catalog decals, and like their work. Have not yet ordered a custom run.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Thanks to call who have replied. I've looked at just about all of the recommendations, and while all can do what I would like, they're very expensive per decal set. I'll keep looking. Guess I got spoiled by Rail Graphics.
Many of us have been making our own decals for years. There are limitations, but if you can live with them the cost is minimal.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I'll se second The circus city suggestion. I had them do a set of Wheeling &a Lake Erie hoppers for me. I supplied e artwork in a vector format, and they did the printing 70 dollars for - 8.5 x 11" got me enough to do 9 or 12 hoppers on one page.
Id recommend them in a heartbeat
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
arbe1948 I have ordered from Bill brillinger: https://pdc.ca/rr/custom_decals/ Great service, quickturn-around, excellent help, very pleased.
He's great to work with. I sent him art on Monday night last week and had the decals in hand on Saturday.