Best Of New Brass EP-2 assembly & Mod clinic

[u18b]

Hmm... after following this
thread and seeing all
your many skills, I was
wondering... can you play
the banjo too...?

No Dee.   

Just guitar.

And I'm a ventriloquist! 
http://u18b.com/vent/

[u18b]

Oh my gosh!

I just imported a scan of my boiler room.
I sized it comparable to the prototype photo I was using (and thus kept the letters the same)....

And look what I saw.....




Wow.  My earlier research was just proven correct.
The prototype road number is LOTS smaller.

It was that big road number decal in the middle that messed me up.

(hope the new decals will be about a million times better.).

[peteski]

Wow Ron, I really asked for this, didn't I?    All I asked was not to accept the oversize decal lettering which did not fit your model properly. I never expected a new TrueType font to come out of this exercise. I sure stirred the hornet's nest here. 

Ron, your skills and abilities never cease to amaze me!  BTW, do you have to work for living?  I couldn't whip up a whole new font on a regular work weekday.   

Seeing the lengths you went through to correct the decal problem, I sure hope that my part of this project will live up to your expectations. Is the lettering supposed to have gold outline?

[u18b]

Wow Ron, I really asked for this, didn't I?    All I asked was not to accept the oversize decal lettering which did not fit your model properly. I never expected a new TrueType font to come out of this exercise. I sure stirred the hornet's nest here. 

Ron, your skills and abilities never cease to amaze me!  BTW, do you have to work for living?  I couldn't whip up a whole new font on a regular work weekday.   

Seeing the lengths you went through to correct the decal problem, I sure hope that my part of this project will live up to your expectations. Is the lettering supposed to have gold outline?

Had some time off today.  Tried to put it to use.

Yes, there is a gold outline.
So I'm assuming you will do two layers.  One gold, one maroon.
Or, depending on the resolution of your printer, the gold could be the outline of the font.
But you would probably need to slightly increase the outline dimensions.

Comparing my font work to the original decal, I'm thinking my font needs to be fatter.
The problem with the original font was not the fatness-- it was the excessive height of the road number in the middle.

[Sokramiketes]

I know I'm late to the party, so I apologize... the font tutorial is good stuff anyway!

Here's a tracing of the Milwaukee lettering in vector PDF: http://cgwrr.com/MilwaukeeRoadLettering2.pdf

You have the font really close, but the leg on the 'K' that you modified should be a thick stroke, not thin, and head right for the opening between the two serif's at the top.

[u18b]

I know I'm late to the party, so I apologize... the font tutorial is good stuff anyway!

Here's a tracing of the Milwaukee lettering in vector PDF: http://cgwrr.com/MilwaukeeRoadLettering2.pdf

You have the font really close, but the leg on the 'K' that you modified should be a thick stroke, not thin, and head right for the opening between the two serif's at the top.

Thanks, Mike.
I made an adjustment.

[peteski]

Had some time off today.  Tried to put it to use.

Yes, there is a gold outline.
So I'm assuming you will do two layers.  One gold, one maroon.
Or, depending on the resolution of your printer, the gold could be the outline of the font.
But you would probably need to slightly increase the outline dimensions.

Comparing my font work to the original decal, I'm thinking my font needs to be fatter.
The problem with the original font was not the fatness-- it was the excessive height of the road number in the middle.

Ah, having a day off from work can be very handy for modeling projects. 

As far as the layers go, there are few methods for printing metallic and color inks on Alps, but you are correct, I prefer to separate things into layers.  In this case I was thinking of white layer, one or more spot color layers for the maroon, then a layer for met. gold.  But in this case, using the orange paint under the decals (instead of white) as a background color might help me to get a better maroon, so I might skip the white ink layer.  That is why I need a chip of the orange paint - so I can experiment.  I'm hoping to get the maroon color to be solid color (not the halftone color of the original decal).

As far as the gold outline goes, I will have to experiment. I can try regular outline around the letters or "behind fill" outline.  I will choose whatever works best.  Having a scan of the model will allow me to make sure I have the size correct.

[u18b]

Spent the rest of the evening on the nose font.

It is very different.
It is not a modified RR Roman.
Instead, it is a block font with no serifs.
And I see some problems/challenges.  The Es are not the same.  And the crossbar on the As is in a different spot, too.




Rather than create a whole new font file, I just crammed stuff into the empty spaces in this font.
So, one TT font,  RailroadFairE3EP2.ttf will do it all.

It may look crazy, but here is the master file.



There is a pattern to this madness.

The second row is CAPITAL letters.   These are the letters for the herald on the side of the Cabs and boiler room.

The third row is small letters (on the keyboard).  They type out the Milwaukee part of the nose herald- which happens to be in CAPS.

Then I placed the  THE and the ROAD together on the keyboard.
So on the top row, you can see I inserted ROAD into the last numbers slots.
And the THE is the asterisk and parenthesis keys.
Further, you can see that the EP2 class lettering is the formerly unused lower case z,x,c.
And I as said previously, the numberboard numbers are up in the pound sign (#) and dollar sign.

Sooooooo.  If you were to type out the following in almost any font, you would get .....



But when you change the words to RailroadFair font, this is what it turns into (with some slight adjustment to the letters position).


This is the nose herald
and the Class designation on the boiler room.
Here is the photo again so you can compare.


That's enough for one day.

[peteski]

WOW!  That is different.
Why didn't you assign all the nose letters to lower case font characters?  That way you wouldn't have the crazy usage of punctuation characters to represent letters.

[robert3985]

I love this thread....   

[bbussey]

WOW!  That is different.
Why didn't you assign all the nose letters to lower case font characters?  That way you wouldn't have the crazy usage of punctuation characters to represent letters.

I agree on this one.  One other trick you can do — put the "THE" and the "ROAD" into one character each.  So for example, if you shoved the "THE" into the less-than sign and the "ROAD" into the greater-than sign, you would type "< milwaukee >" to get the nose lettering.  In a similar vein, you could shove a vector drawing of the herald into the "@" so that you have that available as well.

I basically did this with my Pennsylvania fonts.  It still took four fonts to accommodate all of the possibilities, but I included all of the heralds as well (circle keystone in the "c", keystone in the "k", shadow for the keystone in the "s", etcetera).  The New Haven took two fonts.

The font editor is cool, but I create all of mine directly in CorelDraw.  You still can use existing fonts as a basis for new fonts, and you maintain the "raw" artwork in CorelDraw format.

 

[Kisatchie]

I love this thread....   

I got overwhelmed a long time ago!


Hmm... I once played
the kazoo, and Kiz got
overwhelmed...

[spookshow]

For the "where is this thread going to go next" pool, who had "font design"? lol

Cheers,
-Mark

[u18b]

WOW!  That is different.
Why didn't you assign all the nose letters to lower case font characters?  That way you wouldn't have the crazy usage of punctuation characters to represent letters.

Well, I had to use something.

Remember, the Capital line is used up with the boiler herald.
And on the nose herald, there are two different Es and two different As.
So no matter what, I was going to have to place an extra E and A on something different.

Poor choice or not, I chose keys that were right together.
So,  6789 was a block that was free and connected so I placed ROAD in there.
And the same keys- SHIFT-8,9,0 are the * ( ) which is where I placed  THE.

Made sense at the time.   

[u18b]

I agree on this one.  One other trick you can do — put the "THE" and the "ROAD" into one character each.  So for example, if you shoved the "THE" into the less-than sign and the "ROAD" into the greater-than sign, you would type "< milwaukee >" to get the nose lettering.  In a similar vein, you could shove a vector drawing of the herald into the "@" so that you have that available as well.

I basically did this with my Pennsylvania fonts.  It still took four fonts to accommodate all of the possibilities, but I included all of the heralds as well (circle keystone in the "c", keystone in the "k", shadow for the keystone in the "s", etcetera).  The New Haven took two fonts.

The font editor is cool, but I create all of mine directly in CorelDraw.  You still can use existing fonts as a basis for new fonts, and you maintain the "raw" artwork in CorelDraw format.

1.  Uhhhhhh.  That's why I'm the novice     and you are the true master   

Putting more than one letter in one key never occurred to me.  Good idea.    LOL.


2.  I probably know and use 10% of all Corel Draw can do.

I never paid attention to any font editor.

Over 25 years ago, you taught me how to draw squares and circles for drawing line-art plans for my locomotives.
And I'm afraid I haven't mastered much past that.  LOL