Decals

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hello everyone,

I model in O Scale and I have a US Hobbies chemical tank car that I want to use in chlorine service but can’t find any decals for it. Any ideas?

Thanks

2

You can buy decal paper and make your own. If the car is light-colored, this works pretty well. Computer printers in general can’t print white, though, so white lettering is tough to get using this technique.

What do you need to put on the car that’s not commercially available? Would a generic letters-and-numbers set do, or are there specific graphics involved?

3

White decal paper is made for this. I would outline the letters and or numbers in black thought to make it easier to read and cut.

Irv

4

The trouble with white decal paper is that you either have to cut around the letters or exactly color-match the background. Color-matching can be difficult, so your decal may end up looking more like a “patch” to the lettering on the car.

He’s in O-gauge, so cutting out the letters might not be too impossible, but I wouldn’t think of trying it in HO.

5

To print white lettering you can make them in black, print on paper, then use a photo screen printing process with white ink to print on transparent decal paper. Once printed, you process the decals as usual.

This website explains the photo-screen printing process:

http://www.photoezsilkscreen.com/about.htm

6

MisterBeasley

Actually I’d prefer generic letters and numbers for the car. The car would still need to be lettered for chlorine would it not? Guess more research is in the making.

Thanks

7

Have you tried Microscale? They make lots of O scale decals. http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT