Conrail Vehicle Decals

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

These methods can be used for any vehicle, but all the materials are for Conrail in this project.

First, do some research. Google Images will be your greatest asset. Conrailers go to crcyc.railfan.net. Find your car or truck, or a similar unit if its a custom car. Second, open a Microsoft Word document (or whatever word-processing application you have) and paste the logos that correspond to that vehicle (for Conrail, yellow paint=blue decal, blue paint=white decal). Third, size down the logo in the document. To accurately tell if it will fit, click print preview, and magnify to 50%. Resize the logo until it either fits or you’re satisfied with it. Next, have a cutting implement. Exacto-Knives are perfect, scissors get things done, and if you have neither, a sharp-tipped pocketknife is fine (mini-Swiss knives are near-Exacto quality). And if all else fails, a small paring knife is fine. Once you have a cutting tool, get a glue stick or some small double-sided tape. Make sure with the tape that some clear one-sided goes over top. Print out your sheet if it hasn’t already. Cut your sheet with extreme caution: one mess up on a logo, and you repeat the process. If it’s a Conrail logo, cut a square around it. For a CR Police patrol logo, cut the shape out entirely. Apply the gluestick or tape to the BACK of the logo. Place the logo on the location you wish. That’s all there really is to it. You only need a printer, some sort of word-processer, an adhesive, a cutting tool, and a vehicle to do it on. Das it!

2

You suggestion may work if you are modeling a vehicle with a magnetic or thick vinyl sign on it’s side (such as a tradesman van, or one of the jitney ‘dollar vans’ that operate in Queens*), but may not work well for, as your example, a ConRail police cruiser - the prototype uses decals for that (Pretty sure about that - I can’t imagine ConRail springing for custom hand painting at any point in its history), and the same holds true for models. Even individual vinyl letters would look better applied to a model as a decal (or ‘Dry’ Transfer lettering - that works well on low-rent truck signs like the small COE refrigerated delivery trucks found all over New York City). Luckily a lot of such lettering is Black, great for printing on you ink-jet - white lettering, well, we all know the Pain-In-The-Neck work-arounds for that by now.

*Which is exactly what I did back in the early 1990s w/ my NEC 386 & Epson Action Laser - created a typical ‘Van Plan’ Jitney sign (well, 2 really), black on white paper of course, sanded the paper to make it a bit thinner, and glued it (double sided tape is too thick for anything smaller than G-scale, let alone HO) to the sides of the then ubiquitious Trident HO Chevy Passenger Van. I am certain that I was nowhere near the first to come up with THAT idea.

Yay, I get to use a 4Chanism: “Old modeling tip is old…”. Oh well, don’t feel bad, as I said it does work to represent thick vinyl signs on the sides of vehicles.