General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Does anyone produce a digital number set in HO scale? 

I checked Microscale and did not find any digital fonts.  I probably could make my own decals since I only need black digital numbers.  I found several free digital fonts online.  The only problem is getting them small enough to print for HO scale.

I need the numbers for an Amtrak Superliner II Sleeping car ID.  I have a SupII sleeper for my Southwest Chief trainset and the SupII's have digital number readouts.  So the plan is to get the numbers small enough to fit.  I might even back light it with a small suface mount greenish LED.

Can't tell much of what this is, but it's the best photo I have saved:

Another way to make it smaller is to make the graphic in MS Paint.  Make it nice and big.  This also lets you set up the background color.  That way, you can just print it on plain paper, cut it out and you won't need a decal.

Once you get the whole image the way you want it in Paint, save the file.  Then open up Word and use Insert-Picture-From File and select your image.  You can then re-size the entire picture in Word to get the size you want.  This gets around any minimum point-size limitation you may have with the font.

By right-clicking on the image, you can bring up a "Properties" box.  That will allow you to change the size by typing in height and width in inches, which gives you very fine control over the final size of the picture.

You can shrink the size by making the dots per inch higher... an image that is done at 150dpi will get 75% smaller if you go down to 600dpi.

Also, when working at such small sizes, it is easy enought to construct just what you need, one pixel at a time.  If you have Paint Shop Pro, use the paintbrush tool, set it to one pixel in size then magnify the image to about x15.  That makes it real easy to click the pixels off and make up whatever you want or need.

At 600dpi, an HO scale, 3" letter is only about twenty pixels tall.

Hope this helps...

dlm

Wow so much great help in so little time, I'm impressed.  Thanks all.

Eeek MS Paint   My sister is big into texturing and when she upgraded to PhotoShop, she gave me her old PaintShopPro8.  I'm a little spoiled not having to use MSPaint.

I've also used MS Word to "shrink" many images.  Works pretty well, but not always as clear as the original.  A lot depends on the original.

All of the custom decals I've done over the years have been in G scale.  Pretty easy to get the right sizes in this large scale  

Oh, if anyone was thinking of trying something similar, I believe the digital font I'm using came from here:

Digital Font 

Southwest Chief wrote:

Wow so much great help in so little time, I'm impressed.  Thanks all. Eeek MS Paint   My sister is big into texturing and when she upgraded to PhotoShop, she gave me her old PaintShopPro8.  I'm a little spoiled not having to use MSPaint. I've also used MS Word to "shrink" many images.  Works pretty well, but not always as clear as the original.  A lot depends on the original. All of the custom decals I've done over the years have been in G scale.  Pretty easy to get the right sizes in this large scale   Oh, if anyone was thinking of trying something similar, I believe the digital font I'm using came from here: Digital Font

Ah ha. Then what ypou may try is to haul the pic into Pintshop or Photshop, open up the image properties, unclck the image constrictions, and crank the resolution to 45000 in Paintshop or 30k in Photo.   (Maximums for them) they should stay the same size. Then reduce them to the size you need. They'll be much clearer.