Custom Decals

[delamaize]

Hey everyone,
I am finally starting to build a small fleet of rolling stock and locomotives for my fictitious railroad, that I have been planning for years. The Skookumchuck Belt Line. If anyone is intrested, I'll spill the details I have later.

Anyways, I'll looking at lettering a few 40' boxcars, a pair of hood unit diesel, and a caboose in the near future. The question is, who would the Railwore braintrust recommend for having some custom decals made?

Thanks

[signalmaintainer]

https://www.pdc.ca/rr/custom_decals/

I've purchased custom decals from him. Others have too, and I've heard nothing but good things.

[carlso]

https://circuscitydecals.com/

I have used several of his decals (N scale) and they are very nice !

[signalmaintainer]

Then there's this guy. Likes to yell and shake his fist at prospective customers.

https://modernrails.com/

[mecgp7]

Jim at Highball Graphics already does freelance decals. They are exceptional quality. Highballgraphics.com

[pjm20]

Hey everyone,
I am finally starting to build a small fleet of rolling stock and locomotives for my fictitious railroad, that I have been planning for years. The Skookumchuck Belt Line. If anyone is intrested, I'll spill the details I have later.

Anyways, I'll looking at lettering a few 40' boxcars, a pair of hood unit diesel, and a caboose in the near future. The question is, who would the Railwore braintrust recommend for having some custom decals made?

Thanks

Literally every soldier in the Army is trained in land navigation on the Tenino, WA quadrant map, featuring Skookumchuck Mill. Thanks for a fun memory!

[learmoia]

Then there's this guy. Likes to yell and shake his fist at prospective customers.

https://modernrails.com/

" I WILL NOT STAND FOR COCKY EMAIL OR THE SUCH AND YOU WILL BE PUT ON MY NO MORE DECALS LIST FOR BEING LOUD MOUTHED OR BELLIGERANT. "  ... He says Cocky-ly and Belligerantly.. 


NO DECALS FOR YOU!

[Ike the BN Freak]

I like using Circus City for custom work

[nkalanaga]

If all you need are a few, I'll not be much help. 

If you can do your own art, and want enough decals for an entire railroad on one sheet, Highball can do them, on 8.5x11 inch sheets.

For your own art, he requires .SVG files, which can be a pain.  But there are online conversion sites (free) that can take bitmap files and convert them to SVG.  I've had him do several, in both white and black, and they turned out nicely.  I do the art in MS Paint (the old XP version!), then covert the file to SVG.  The conversion site I use will only convert single-color pages, but that's all I'm doing anyway.

[garethashenden]

" I WILL NOT STAND FOR COCKY EMAIL OR THE SUCH AND YOU WILL BE PUT ON MY NO MORE DECALS LIST FOR BEING LOUD MOUTHED OR BELLIGERANT. "  ... He says Cocky-ly and Belligerantly.. 


NO DECALS FOR YOU!

Wow. What great customer service!

[CRR Chase]

there are probably many GREAT resources for this.
I had good results from circus city.. but he is all Ive used..
just saying he does a good job, and pretty quick turn around time.
 

[Jesse6669]

I use Fusion Scale Graphics.  They do excellent work, thin film decals. 

I've been know to do design work when prodded a little for fellow TRW denziens, feel free to PM me.

[randgust]

I noticed that MicroMark has laser decal sheets in both clear and white background again after a LONG absence of that material.

I've made a lot of my own and custom decals that way by Photoshopping .JPG's, and using conventional text and reverse imaging color in Excel.

Right now I'm making custom N  decals for the Cole Bros. 1917 circus train, reverse imaging on clear (background painted white for white lettering, color match the car color to the decal).   The other interesting way to 'cheat' is to hi-res scan a set of HO decals (hey, you paid for them) and resize and reprint them in N - it's for individual use, you can't sell them, that's a copyright violation.   

If you have access to a color laser printer that can handle transparancies, it works amazingly well.   Unlike inkjet decals, they don't run, period.  They still require surface sealing, but after that I've bombed them mercilessly with Solvaset with no ill effects.

One of my all-time favorites of that reverse-image technique was my original M&ET GE 70-tonner load, as these decals were not available in N.   And no, they were never offered for sale, just sayin'.



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/GE70_MET608_flatcar1.jpg

[randgust]

I did a run last night of my own decals printed on Micro Mark paper using a combination of Photoshop and Excel for a run of Cole Bros circus cars, including the 'advertising car', which was an epic billboard baggage car with hand-painted lettering, no font need apply, it had to be lifted and recolored from old photos.   Laser color printed and then sealed with Testors Decal Bonder.

And reverse imaged as it was all white lettering on dark background, so the car body is white under the lettering surrounded by color.    On the 'degree of difficulty' scale, this was one of the toughest I've ever done; it combined scanning a very set of old HO decals and resizing that to N, redoing artwork from a black and white book of photos with help from my Photoshop guru son, and playing with reverse image lettering for some more stock cars (white on red again).

I'd tried doing this with inkjet, and even with liberal coats of Decal Bonder, it would get to the ink from the back and bleed the magenta ever so slightly around about everything.   And the inkject paper seemed rubbery by comparison.   We'll see how this goes.

[peteski]

Wow, you're really not kidding.  Caps lock all the way....
" I WILL NOT STAND FOR COCKY EMAIL OR THE SUCH AND YOU WILL BE PUT ON MY NO MORE DECALS LIST FOR BEING LOUD MOUTHED OR BELLIGERANT"

I like the preceeding paragraph too.  He is not too shy in his proclamation:
MY WORK IS HIGH QUALITY. JUST LOOK AT MY FEEDBACK IN CUSTOMER'S TESTIMONIAL. I HAVE CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE AS I AM GOOD AT WHAT I DRAW. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT. MY DECALS ARE THE BEST. . .