Garden Railway Forum

Thanks guys.

Andrew wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:03 am “…I'm guessing the livery will be a coat of Sodor orangey-brown?! "Duck" will need to go green, of course…”

Certainly not! Obviously, this obscure branchline has to be somewhere not too far from Weymouth. They had loads of Pannier tanks — and green coaches. Huh!

Well Bertie, whatever the faults and mistakes, they will only be visible to your eyes. Really good looking stock

Phil — Thanks very much. Now that I’ve calmed down, I guess I’m happy how they’ve turned out. Had to do quite a bit of remedial work (and sand away a fair bit of filler) on no.2 though. Cheers!

BertieB wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:33 am Phil — Thanks very much. Now that I’ve calmed down, I guess I’m happy how they’ve turned out. Had to do quite a bit of remedial work (and sand away a fair bit of filler) on no.2 though. Cheers!

Isn't it annoying to spend money on something which you turn into dust and blow away? (Thinks - entrepreneurial idea - sell packets of dust for people to blow away, cut out the hard part!) Have I missed anything?

There’s now a video of ‘will they cope with the curves in the back garden’ posted in the Video forums here: https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopi ... 4&t=13576

BertieB wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:39 pm There’s now a video of ‘will they cope with the curves in the back garden’ posted in the Video forums here: https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopi ... 4&t=13576

Now you've established that you can't reduce the gap further, are you going to reinstate the buffers? They could be shortened if necessary, I'm sure

Lonsdaler wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:50 pm ‘….are you going to reinstate the buffers?’

Still pretty certain buffers would get in the way on tighter curves, I’m afraid. But underframe, bogies and coach ends will all be painted murky black and I’m prepared to find it difficult to notice (as usual) that there’s anything missing.

The first two coaches of the 2021 Modernisation Plan now have a couple of coats of Agreeable Green — malachite — possibly not accurate but then neither are the coaches.

I’ve read that the Southern and then the Southern Region often re-varnished older coaches, rather than repainting them, so a variety of greens could be seen well into the BR era. That’s my excuse. They’d probably be so grubby you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.

DIY inkjet transfers (on white decal paper) can be a bit of a faff, as you need to match the background on which they’ll be applied. Middle picture shows varied Photoshop swatch samples, based on a scan of the painted background colour (plasticard off-cut, top picture, right), from my cheapo HP printer/scanner. ‘Scan 2’ (middle picture, far right) seemed a reasonable match.

Bottom pic shows the printed A5 ‘page’ of the required items, using the background green chosen. I’ll need to touch up all the white edges after application.

You can get decals with transparent backgrounds professionally printed to order, of course, but unfortunately they’re rather expensive.

(This is what I do now on a Saturday night)

Cheers!

BertieB wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:54 pm
DIY inkjet transfers (on white decal paper) can be a bit of a faff, as you need to match the background on which they’ll be applied...... I’ll need to touch up all the white edges after application.

Yes, thats what I've done in the past as well. Touching up the edges I always find to be an unsatisfactory 'mare, so I'll be fascinated to see how you do it.

The coaches themselves are looking fabulous, of course.

Those coaches really looking good in their livery. I too will be following the decal story with interest. I've been using white self adhesive vinyl for my crests up to now and have a similar problem matching the background to the livery.

Rik

I use a guy in USA called Stan Cederleaf for my decals. Waterslide on a clear background, but due to his equipment it prints white. Provide your own design or have him design for you. At around $60.00 for a A4 sheet not cheap, but he will fill the sheet and they are very good. This is an example:

While searching for self adhesive, Welsh red Dragon stickers I came across this on eBay:
https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/K ... l1200.webp
He will print any design you ask and is not expensive. I had some made and they are just what I wanted.
Search..... greenteagraphics in eBay for further information.

They are fantastic mate.

I'm also looking into majing my iwn decals. What program do you use is it just the normal word/paint pages/drawing ones

UK custom decal suppliee:

https://custom-model-decals.com/

The splodgy mess around the transfers is a protective coat of Humbrol Clear I put on after they had dried. The following day I could paint over it as necessary. I suppose I should have printed them to the width of the panel and door


The decals / transfers worked out fine. Colour match wasn’t too bad and, of course, there were scruffy white edges but I hadn’t trimmed them too tightly and there was plenty of space to tidy up with a small paint brush.

With the whole coach then spray varnished, I think they look OK. But after all that, these livery details are quite small and restrained — outside, I don’t suppose they’ll be particularly noticeable (as you can see in the picture below).


Thanks for all the interest. JimmyB’s guy in the US offering bespoke transfers (including white print) on transparent backgrounds, all for $60 an A4 sheet is the cheapest I’ve heard of. However…

Sylvian Tennant wrote: Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:18 am 'What program do you use – is it just the normal word/paint pages/drawing ones?'

I’ve been using ancient, legacy, print design software — particularly Photoshop (versions that came on install discs) — on elderly Macs for ages, which isn’t really of much help to you.

If you want to match backgrounds or aim for specific colours, you’ll need image editing and / or graphics applications that let you work in CMYK* (because your printer does) and that offer precise control of colour, type, imported images and sizing. You could sign up to Creative Cloud — it’s only 50 quid a month! But no doubt there are cheaper alternatives.

(*CMYK - cyan, magenta, yellow, black - are the inks used in colour printing and colours are defined by their percentages, in that order)

Cheapo inkjet printers / scanners can be amazing value (I’d recommend HP) but the colour is never absolutely accurate, which is why I go through the whole palaver of doing a set of swatches / colour samples — including slightly darker, lighter, warmer, cooler alternatives to the scanned colour I’m trying to match (as shown in the earlier photograph). I don’t think there’s a better way to assess colour accuracy, than printing out the colour (on the decal paper you intend to use) and holding it against the original. But sometimes that doesn’t work either.

Best of luck!

BertieB wrote: Wed Aug 11, 2021 9:14 pm Thanks for all the interest. JimmyB’s guy in the US offering bespoke transfers (including white print) on transparent backgrounds, all for $60 an A4 sheet is the cheapest I’ve heard of.

Link to website https://cedarleafcustomdecals.com/

I've produced my own decals too, but using a laserjet printer, with appropriate white decal paper, and go through the same process to 'blend' them in. For software I use an ancient copy of Macromedia Fireworks (from before Macromedia were swallowed by Adobe). It's text manipulation is second to none, and other than having to run it in compatibilty mode on my Win 10 pc, it does exactly what I want, still. The main problem I have now is that the supplier I have used since 2014 now states that his paper is suitable only for a limited number of laser printers, not including the model I have I can still print with it, but have to make sure the printer is cold (no previous print jobs in the last few hours), and only do a single sheet at a time, otherwise I get a horrible overprinted, smudged mess. Oh, and, if you're tempted to try decal printing yourself, always produce a full sheet in one pass. You cannot put the paper through the printer again, having, say, printed a small batch on the sheet, then cut them off and try to print more on the remaining sheet. Guess how I know this!

I’ve used other combinations of software, different decal papers and inkjet printers in the past — and all of them seem to have particular idiosyncrasies, that you just stumble across through trial and error.

What seems to be common to all is the need to find the printer setting that works (with ‘type of paper’ and ‘quality’ on my current printer, for example — there’s never a ‘white decal paper’ option) and exporting your artwork as a (CMYK) PDF and printing from that. Again, you can experiment with PDF preferences. Hi-res settings (300dpi) don’t always produce better results…

I’m so pleased to hear that others have wasted hours on this sort of nonsense too!

BertieB wrote: Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:39 pm
I’m so pleased to hear that others have wasted hours on this sort of nonsense too!

Computers and their peripherals are the bain of my life! For my pains, I also help manage the IT for a charity I'm involved in - thank the gods that we have a person who mostly knows what he's doing!

It’s been a while but two more coaches from the 2021 Modernisation Plan are almost ready for the paint shop.

Fun-scale, freelance Coach 3 (above, left) has a cab at one end, to be part of a new, tank engine powered, ‘push-pull’ set.

The cab design however, is not too different from Coach 4 (next to it and below) the even more freelance, proto-Thumper, early DEMU power car, so both can run together as a dodgy multiple unit, at least for now — possibly even with additional coaches between them (we just won’t pay too much attention to the ‘wrong’ end).


Sadly, the G-bits site no longer appears to be functioning, so the power car has two motor blocks from Ince Loco Works, found online. I hope they’ll be able to cope with the coaches, which are fairly hefty. Control will be either Deltang or Loco Remote, I don’t know which right now.

There’s still 52 quadruple (back-to-back) and double seat units to complete for the four coaches — and the passengers haven’t even made it out of the box yet. There’s also a plan, kind of, to print appropriate seat moquettes as DIY decals… we’ll see.

And for those not familiar with them, ‘Thumper’ became the popular name for first generation, late 1950s, BR Southern Region, diesel-electric multiple units, as a consequence of the immensely satisfying racket made by their low-revving, 4-cylinder English Electric diesels. I thought I might experiment with placing one of those Bluetooth speakers (that deliver lots of ‘enhanced’ or ‘extra’ bass) inside the ‘engine compartment’, to play heavy Thumper audio when it, eventually, trundles about. It’ll freak out the cat, though.

It’s quite long

Even longer! (Four won’t fit on the table)

Not too sure about that typeface for the numbers. Might have to look at that again. A bit of tidying up to do too (spot the shirt button).