Car-sized decals?

[Dave Schneider]

Hello folks,

A couple of weeks ago I posted some shots of my Milwaukee Road RB project. I need make some decals for this car (especially the monster logo) and this got me thinking about trying to replicate the rivet detail, logo, reporting marks, weathering, etc as a car-sized decal. This has been done before and I have seen the article in Model Railroader, but I thought I would ask the advice of the many talented modelers in this forum. Has anyone here tried this before?

Here is the car that I am trying to replicate.





My model as currently built only approximates the rivet lines and panel widths. I am thinking about building another one of these cars but sanding the sides smooth, scribing in the door, and then applying the decal to the side. I would add the necessary 3-d details, tack board, grabs, door hardware, door stops, etc afterwards. Or maybe I should leave the door detail and just do the decal on either side of it.



So here are some questions:
1) The logo needs to be printed on white decal paper. Should I do the entire car side on white or just the logo? This would seem to have the advantage of making the orange color more opaque (I would still apply it to an orange painted car).
2) Should I do the decal on clear paper and apply it to an orange car? This might give the rivet/panels a bit more depth. I would do the logo separately and apply it later. This seems like a better idea of I were to leave the door as is and apply decals in two pieces (on either side of the door).
3) Is this a bad idea? Be honest...I can take it.

Thanks for your thoughts on this idea.

Best wishes,
Dave

[GaryHinshaw]

Well, the example of this technique that sticks most vividly in my mind (for some reason) is here:

http://therailwire.net/smf/index.php/topic,14922.msg124490.html#msg124490

[tom mann]

I would do this:

1.  paint the entire car orange, but leave the parallelogram as white and brighten the area that would be under the MILW.
2.  apply two decals for the left and right sides.  you don't need the door.  these decals should be on clear with rivet detail and all lettering.

So the herald (on clear paper) would fit over the white parallelogram, giving you white MILWAUKEE ROAD text.

[diezmon]

something I noticed.. the rivets on your model are on the opposite side of the seams, from the pic.  That might turn out odd?  or would you shave down the model rivets first?  Are you talking about making the whole side a decal?  orange, rivets, and all?

If you are doing a whole side decal, why not paint the entire car side white?  I remember that article too.. I seem to remember him painting the whole side white, then applying the decal.

I have an alps, that prints white..  I had trouble with it last time I tried it, but I'd be willing to print the logo for ya, if the d*mn thing is working 

[Dave Schneider]

something I noticed.. the rivets on your model are on the opposite side of the seams, from the pic.  That might turn out odd?  or would you shave down the model rivets first?  Are you talking about making the whole side a decal?  orange, rivets, and all?

If you are doing a whole side decal, why not paint the entire car side white?  I remember that article too.. I seem to remember him painting the whole side white, then applying the decal.

I have an alps, that prints white..  I had trouble with it last time I tried it, but I'd be willing to print the logo for ya, if the d*mn thing is working 

The model I show was my first attempt at representing these cars and I am fairly happy with it. There are very notable problems like you mention with the rivets on the wrong side of the seams and the panels being too narrow, etc. This got me thinking about a better/faster (?) way to model these cars, so I propose printing the whole side as a decal with the rivets, ribs, reporting marks, weathering, etc and applying it to a car with all of the rivet and panel detail sanded off.  I wonder whether the lack of 3D for the rivets will look lame...I guess I will have to try it out and see.

Thanks for the offer of the the Alps. I have a practically unused one (less than 10 prints) sitting in a box ready to go at some point.

Best wishes,
Dave

[Dave Schneider]

Well, the example of this technique that sticks most vividly in my mind (for some reason) is here:

http://therailwire.net/smf/index.php/topic,14922.msg124490.html#msg124490

Gary, Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten about this thread. Thanks to Tom for writing this great tutorial. Since my application is a bit less vivid (by about 20 million colors) I am hoping that it will work on a laser printer. I don't know how I would be able to hide a new $300+ Epson printer from my wife....maybe if I bought a new 60-inch HD TV and put the printer behind it.

Dave

[tom mann]

I don't think a laser could print out the orange color without noticeable dots (see the smurftastic thread).

I think if you get clever with how the rivets are designed in Photoshop, they will look great as a decal.  Again, much resolution is needed in both the source file and the printer to pull this off.

[Dave Schneider]

I don't think a laser could print out the orange color without noticeable dots (see the smurftastic thread).

I think if you get clever with how the rivets are designed in Photoshop, they will look great as a decal.  Again, much resolution is needed in both the source file and the printer to pull this off.

Thanks for the advice Tom. I may try to separate the rivet, panel, and reporting mark detail in Photoshop and rely on paint (gasp!) for the car color. I feel more confident in my computer skills than my painting skills but I won't get any better at that if I don't try.

I also need to get rid of the MILW patch as I am modeling ~1972 when these cars with in URTX marks. I have a couple of slides of these cars in my collection so I should be able to produce a nice high res source. I need a mini fleet of these cars (like 10 at least) so I need to come up with a solution that allows for some variability.

Dave

[Dave Schneider]

Well, I've taken a new approach to these cars. I tried to extract the rivets and reporting marks using Photoshop, but wasn't successful. There  was just too much weathering to cleanly extract/edit the parts that I wanted. Also, I want to build a fleet of these cars, rather than just the one, and I needed a more generic approach.

So I concentrated on producing a rivet and reporting mark overlay. I did this in an hour or so in Adobe Illustrator, and it really wasn't that hard. Mostly just cut and paste overlain on the car side that I cut out and corrected the perspective in Photoshop. I scaled everything to fit over my current car side, which has an 8 foot door (correct for this number) vs. the 10 ft door in the proto photo. For you N scale rivet counters (there must be one somewhere) this  car has 1114. Let me know if I missed any. 

I am hoping it might all blend together well once it is weathered. The nice thing is that this should print fine in a laser printer. I did two versions, one with the vertical panel lines, and one without. I think that the latter approach will be better as the panel lines seem to overpower the graphic. Hopefully the lack of 3D won't be a problem. This would be a cool application for the Archer surface decal technique. Wish I had one of those machines.



Now I need to wait for the temperature to warm up before I can paint it as it has been -15 to -30F for the past couple of weeks and my "heated" garage is still a bit frosty.

Best wishes, Dave

[tom mann]

Looks good, but try Century Gothic for the CAPY, LDMLT letters.  It should be a better match.

What are you doing for the herald?

[Dave Schneider]

Looks good, but try Century Gothic for the CAPY, LDMLT letters.  It should be a better match.

What are you doing for the herald?

Thanks for the font suggestion. I used Ariel Narrow.  I used RR Roman for the reporting marks and the Refrigerator text, but need to squish it a bit horizontally to make it match as close as I could. It might still be off a bit.

I plan on doing the herald by printing on white decal paper and cutting it out.

I too need to put this work on hold for a couple of days, as my Mother-in-Law's furnace quit, the radiator pipes froze and then burst. I'll would gladly trade you for a leaky window! Luckily the weather has finally moved above zero.

Best wishes, Dave

[Dave Schneider]

Looks good, but try Century Gothic for the CAPY, LDMLT letters.  It should be a better match.

What are you doing for the herald?

Thanks for the font suggestion. I used Ariel Narrow.  I used RR Roman for the reporting marks and the Refrigerator text, but need to squish it a bit horizontally to make it match as close as I could. It might still be off a bit.

I plan on doing the herald by printing on white decal paper and cutting it out.

I too need to put this work on hold for a couple of days, as my Mother-in-Law's furnace quit, the radiator pipes froze and then burst. I'll would gladly trade you for a leaky window! Luckily the weather has finally moved above zero.

If you want to try this car as a full sized decal let me know. The high res slide scan has really nice detail.

Best wishes, Dave