I'm like Kevin, I have what I need for the rest of my life in terms of decals from Rail Graphics.
I would pass on a new freelanced railroad today, but not for lack of fantasies, of which I have many.
I don't want to be exposed to any more solvent paints. If people wore solvent badges like radiologists wore xray badges to measure exposure. I would be prohibited anyway.
The detail in modern loco is enormous, windshield wipers, window trim. I do not have the skills to do the extremely detailed painting or removing and painting tiny details. You can watch youtube reviews of various new locos, and the reviewer can hardly get it out of the box without finding loose parts or breaking something.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
SeeYou190For the older freelance modelers like me... would you do it today of you had to start over... I would not.
Mike
Call me wrong and a pessimist, but the current generation of modelers are more and more verging on the "pay more, run RTR, no tinkering" type. Ive been finding more and more expensive engines that just have a broken wire, a backwards wheel(causing short), and forgotten decoder address on ebay, selling for 1/2 the price. Really simple issues that every modeler will encounter, and should know how to fix. Yet they dont. Car and engine kits are long gone, replaced with the newest ready to run, with sound and smoke. If so much as a little detail is bent, or a scratch in the paint, some customers will complain.
Now Im aware that theres many knowledgable modelers out there, and kits on ebay and train shows are everywhere, but seeing the transistion to RTR is pretty clear, I dont see the demand for undec engines, paint, and custom decals(or even brass detail parts) increasing anytime soon.
Its a shame, and maybe not true, but in my eyes, it seems so.
On the plus side, that's just more engines on Ebay for me!
Charles
PS personally, I would like to model a freelanced railroad, but my skills on painting and detailing are dreadful as of the moment. However, Im working on improving them, especially during the coronvirus summer break, now that I got time. Maybe Ill go freelance one day!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modeling the PRR & NYC in HO
Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/@trainman440
Instagram (where I share projects!): https://www.instagram.com/trainman440
Freelancing. It's fun if you can think up a good "legend" for your road, and perhaps a time period (do you want to run steam or not?) And a name that catches your fancy. And some good names for cities and towns, important industries, rivers, lakes, etc. And you want to enjoy painting and lettering and decaling. Freight trains only need home road (your free lance road) name on locomotives and cabeese and a couple of freight cars. The rest of the cars can be interchange cars from any factory painted prototype road that strikes your fancy. Passenger trains can have a lot of Pullmans and other prepainted road sleepers and baggage, but you ought to letter the coaches for your home road.
Custom Decals: I read (I haven't tried it yet) that you can make your own decals on your computer and print them onto special decal paper on an ordinary ink jet printer. One hangup, inkjet printers don't print white. I lettered my freelance cars with ordinary 1/8 inch alphabet decals or rub on transfer alphabets. Plenty of roads just lettered the road name on the sides of their cars, they didn't bother with graphic heralds except on locomotives, and often not even them.
You don't need undecorated models. You can strip the paint off a prepainted model shell. Just soak it in 91% alcohol for some hours, maybe over night and the factory paint will come right off with a little scrubbing from an old tooth brush. You may be able to find a good paint match and paint over car numbers and road names and the patch over doesn't show. I did this on a set of BB GP38's. My Floquil B&M blue matched the Athearn factory B&M blue perfectly.
Rattle cans. I am conserving my stash of Floquil by using rattle cans as much as possible. Krylon and Rustoleum red auto primer makes a fine box car red, a good color for freight car trucks, and a fine brick red. The dark gray auto primer is good on steam locomotives, canvas roofs on wood passenger, cabeese, and milk cars, and the under carriage of rolling stock. The light gray is good for covered hoppers and rolling stock undercarriage. The plain gloss red works for passenger maroon with a top coat of DullCote. The olive drab makes a good Pullman green.
I have heard of some fairly way out free lances. There was one that served the Mines of Moria and had orcs for trainmen. There was a Luna City RR that ran in vacuum on the surface of the moon. The diesel locomotives had huge tenders carrying tanks of compressed air for the engines.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
SeeYou190 You need four things to successfully build a freelance railroad: 1) Custom decals or lettering. 2) Undecorated models. 3) Appropriate paint. 4) An open mind towards fantasy. It seems that all four are becoming in shorter supply.
You need four things to successfully build a freelance railroad:
1) Custom decals or lettering.
2) Undecorated models.
3) Appropriate paint.
4) An open mind towards fantasy.
It seems that all four are becoming in shorter supply.
I'll address each of these points.
1. I make my own decals. So far I've only done so on a limited basis due to other projects but I've finally gotten everything I need to do my entire loco and rolling stock fleet and I expect to have everything lettered for my road within a couple weeks.
2. I'm not obsessed with fine detail so this doesn't really apply to me. It's also not necessary to get undecorated models. I can simply repaint over ones painted for another road. I've done this with boxcars from a previous layout that weren't appropriate for either my current time frame or local. My current railroad has an eastern locale and my old fleet had far too many western roads in it to seem plausible. They've been repainted and are now awaiting decaling. Quite a while ago I did order some undecorated Athearn and Bowser boxcars. The Bowsers were painted and already had the data portion so all I need to do with those is add my roadname decaling an numbers. I also just purchased data only water slide decals but it looks like it is going to be a bit of a challenge. The tiny white lettering against a light blue background is almost impossible for my aging eyes to make out so cutting them is not going to be easy.
3. I can paint my fleet any color that looks right to me. It took me a while but I finally found shades of boxcar red and pullman green in rattle cans that looked right to me.
4. While my railroad is a fantasy, I want to make it seem as plausible as possible. I don't want to take an anything goes approach. I might cut a few corners, but for the most part I want it to seem as if the railroad could have existed. My freelanced railroad models fictional towns but the staging yards represent interchanges with real places and railroads. In addition, the NYC, Pennsy, and Erie have trackage rights on portions of my road so their equipment will make an appearance.
As a free-lancer myself, I use Tamiya spray can paint (which has a finer nozzle / spray than most 'big box' store paints) as my railroad's colors. Red-Brown for freight cars, Bright Red for cabooses, Olive Drab for heavyweight passenger cars, and two shades of blue for diesels and lightweight passenger cars.
I agree about decals. I still have a fair number of Don Manlick decals, but haven't found anyone to make new ones. I gave some DM decals to the folks at San Juan Model Co. at the Nat'l Narrow Gauge convention in 2018 to see if they could do the custom decals for me, still waiting to hear back from them!
Since I'm still new to the hobby, I bought what I knew from my area -- BNSF and UP.
However, after reading the Forum for a while and seeing pictures on the Weekend Photos, I'm considering a small attempt at some free-lancing.
I've been going over and over thinking about a name and symbol.
I'm a big 1950s science fiction fan, and I've considered trying a name that connects with that.
I don't know. This is all just thinking right now. I'm pretty lazy in retirement, and it may be more work than I'm willing to do.
York1 John
DoughlessMy free lanced short line uses locos with patched out lettering and numbering. A little sanding or scraping, acrylic touch up paint
I don't even go that far. Fact is ;I don't have a name for my RR. I run trains just for the fun of it.
So am I a ''sub'' free lancer ? Or don't I count at all?
I guess it depends on how deeply you go into the free lance world.
My free lanced short line uses locos with patched out lettering and numbering. A little sanding or scraping, acrylic touch up paint mixed to match or even slightly off to get the typical patched look, and minimal decals.
If I paint the entire loco, it just a single color dip paint scheme with block lettering. Krylon rattle can and block letter decals and I'm good. I don't have free lanced rolling stock.
- Douglas
I decided to start a new thread for this topic. Big Daddy made this response in a different thread about Testors paints:
BigDaddyThe freelanced railroad is a distant memory. If the freelancers still exist in any number, how many bottles of Milwaukee Road orange or C&O blue are they going to buy?
Please, I do not want this to become a talk about "Real" model railroaders, or anything like that. I want to talk about freelancing today and how it compare to yesterday.
I am a freelancer...period. I am not a proto-lancer, free-reality, or reality-inspired model railroader. The STRATTON AND GILLETTE is fake. It exists in fake region, in a fake world, where it interchanges with other fake railroads, and the whole thing should have a pseudo-fantasy feel when it is complete.
I make no statements for where the SGRR is, or even if it is in the United States.
The only thing we know for sure about the SGRR is that it only exists on Tuesday, August 3rd, 1954, at 2:00 in the afternoon.
So that is my railroad, it is mine, it is what it is.
I created the SGRR over 35 years ago when I was in High School. At that time, freelancers were common. With so many of us, we could get what we needed.
1) Rail Graphics and Don Manlick are gone. There are other small options out there, but they all lack the buyer-friendly interface the RG and DM had. Back in the day, you could fill out a simple form, send a check for $30.00 or so, and in a few weeks you would have decals for your railroad. You did not need any creative skill or anything, just an idea. The entry into a freelanced roadname is not so easy now.
2) Undecorated models are becoming quite rare. Accurail is the best option for now, but if you want next-level detail they will require more work. Getting a new DCC/Sound locomotive undecorated is nearly impossible. There are ways around this, but like the decals, it is getting more complicated.
3) There are still good options for paint (Scalecoat 2), but the selection is thinning.
4) The Model Railroad community is very much about realism right now. I do not see a lot of inspiration for the newbie with an idea for his own railroad often.
So.... If I decided to start the SGRR right now, I would have a much harder time.
I have all the locomotives, freight cars, paints, and decals I will ever need. As such, manufacturers would be foolish to manufacture for me.
For the older freelance modelers like me... would you do it today of you had to start over... I would not.
For the younger modelers... Would you even consider a freelanced model railroad with the limitations of today's market?
For the guys building freelanced railroads... How do you get the supplies you need?
-Kevin
Living the dream.