Robert:
An issue with “Railroad Roman” is that there were literally dozens of different roman-type fonts used by the various railroads. Lettering style was very idiosyncratic to the road. An issue with available Champ (and Walthers, and Herald
King, etc) decals is that they are old now, and not always sound enough to get down on a model. But even if they are, you still are left with decal film that’s about twice as thick as modern decal films. And, talk about piecing together road names or numbers?
Bah!
About 4 years ago, I started making my own decals. Or rather, I make the decal artwork (in a program called Corel), and email digital files to Highball Graphics. They print my decals on outstanding, very thin film stock. My pro painters
like working with them, and the results are outstanding from a mechanical perspective, and exactly what I put into the artwork. Jim Abbott at Highball is super to work with, and very helpful. He prints on 8-1/2” x 11” stock, so most decals can be printed
as a single piece to cover an HO scale model. One full-color sheet, printed, costs $35; add $5 for Jim to mail all the sheets you order at the same time. Minimum order quantity is 1 sheet, which beats Microscale’s business model all to Heck. Oh, and the
Highball color laser printer does 600 dpi, so their decals are sharper than Microscale’s screen printed decals. Lettering down to 1-1/2 scale inches in HO is readable, with a magnifying glass. I do builder’s plate decals for all my steam loco projects with
the correct construction number and date for the road number I’m doing, and those construction numbers and dates are readable on the model.
If your 1920’s era cars had metallic gold lettering, Highball has an ALPS printer that (until supplies run out) can do metallic gold or metallic silver for $40 per sheet.
I have about 20 different Truetype fonts from Railfonts.com, including at least 7 Roman font types. Even then, there are times that I have to modify the characters, and on rare occasions, start new characters from scratch, to get exactly
what I want. At other times, the standard fonts that typically come with a PC make better substitutes or starting points.
Corel is incredibly capable. I’ve attached some of the artwork I’ve done to date, FYI, as .jpgs. Everything you see that’s not lettering (and even some that is) is original artwork that I’ve built in Corel over bitmap graphics I’ve found
on the web. (Highball can only print vector-defined objects; they cannot print bitmapped objects.) I’ve also included images of a few CB&Q models done with decals I have produced.
I have the Academic version; I wrote to Corel and asked if I could use that (~$90) version rather than the (~$495) commercial version, and they said, so long as one only does work for oneself, and not for sale or use in a commercial product,
any model railroader has their blessing to buy and use the Academic version. The down-side to Corel is that the learning curve is
fierce. Railfonts’ license for their font sets are also for personal, not for commercial, use. Their font sets cost from $7 to $14 each with that personal use license, and they are generally excellent. They install on a computer like any other Truetype
font, and are used in the same way.
For other groups, I have done a ~2 hour Zoom presentation to show people how to get started in all of this. If there’s interest in the CBQ group, and somebody in the group has a Zoom license that can cover enough attendees, I’d be glad
to present it again. I’ve done decal sets for over 400 projects to date, and don’t even think about using commercial decals anymore, even if modern ones are available. I’ve successfully launched quite a few other modelers on this path.
Again, the learning curve can be fierce (I can help with that), but the upside of learning this is the ability to successfully tackle virtually any finishing project you might wish to—and those c1920 passenger cars would make a simple first
project.
Any interest?
-Eric
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Folks--
I need to letter some passenger cars for my 1920-era layout. The heavyweight passenger car set from Microscale is for 1940-to the merger. The lettering looks different to me from pre-Depression photos. Suggestions?
Thanks!
Bob Herrick
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