Hey gang!!!
I have a question, I want to have a herald repensenting my own railroad, how would one go by getting one made any tips??? thanks for the help[swg
Trainsrme1[8D]
Howdy, Trains!
There are a number of factors which go to making a believable herald for your free-lance or “proto-lance” railroad:
What is your era?: Decide on the era you are modeling - Transition, early 20th Century, Modern, etc… Then look at the prototype heralds for that era.
What does your railroad do? Is it primarily an industrial, agricultural/granger road, belt line, Bridge line, Class 1 General hauler, what?
Where does your railroad run? Great Plains, Mountains, coastal, Desert Southwest, City?
Remember that railroads are first and foremost a service business, and that the logo your company has is in itself an advertisement for the company and its services.
Your logo should match the advertising practices of the era you are modeling. e.g.: Art Deco would be out of place in a turn-of-the-century business, since Art Deco didn’t become popular until the late 1920’s and the 1930s. However, a modern-era railroad could still use the logo that was designed back in the 1920s or earlier, though I would question the viability of such a company if they couldn’t come up with snappier advertising than a 70- or 80-year-old logo. [:)]
If possible, you should include some symbolism describing your railroad’s primary services (a tree for a logging road, for example). This could also, in the case of a “belt” line around a large city, include the route - check out the Chicago Belt Line logo
MS word and MS Paint are good starting points. Word has a lot in the way of pre-made shapes that you can work with. (Tip: When you make your piece, go to the little button on the picture toolbar that looks like a dog in front of lines, and click on any of those. Then yo can nudge pidctures around slightly) Paint is good for saving pictures and just playing around. If you have it, Photoshop is wonderful. But if you don’t it;s not always neccecary.
Hang on a sec and I’ll load some of mine.
MS Paint only, Not the greatest. Stylized (i.e. bad) version of a 4-8-4 Northern using halves of circles for the front, and a text overlay
Word/Paint/Photoshop. Varient of the Southern Pacific Daylight, I pasted over a small circle made in Word in a white color onto the SP logo in Paint. I set white as the background, and told Paint to not read white, giving me a nice, even semi-circle opening like a moon. I then copied the logo into photoshop, selected the colors, and tewaked them to give me this. I’ve also “traced” this one in Word/Paint and made these Work In Project pieces:
No Photshop in those at all.
On Printing: If you absolutely need white, use grey. When running off decals, be sure to fill the whole page. re-using can be a nuisnece. print your decals off on the right paper, and spray them down several times with a decal sealent. Else, the ink will try to wash off.
My logo: 
I used MS Paint.
Whisper River Timber Company ( Freelance) along the SP near Mt Shasta in 1910 Peter Smith, Memphis 
I simply took a real railroad image and modified it.
Oh, yes, this is the East Central Indiana railroad (HO scale).
How did yow erase the original lettering? Also, did you use MS Paint?
Hmm. It’s not very catchy as a company logo. A neat picture though. I should add too that Northern isn’t putting there’s on the sides of cars, just as stationary heading, it would be hard to paint. Whereas Timber River or ECI’s would look just as good in a Black/White/Grey and be planted on the side of a boxcar.
I have a few of the rrpaintshop lines of locos, with the heralds on them, but for the life of me my e-mail doesn’t like to send o them, and I get messeges returned
Here is a link to some on-line “seal generator” software that may be of use:
I pilfered a common base herald from the Anthracite region I model…
The Reading, Lehigh Valley, Erie, and now the Reading & Northern and Genosee Valley Transportation all use variations of a black diamond on there heralds.
Edit
Following Paul’s first rule here’s the PL Diamond in Black & White
Nick
I made my new herald with that.
I had a logo design book in my hands once (I wish I had bought it). There were several “rules” for creating your own company logo. Two that I remember are:
1). Your logo should also look good in black & white. If it looks good in b&w, that means it’s a clear, legible design that is easily seen and understood. If your logo design needs color in order to see it, then it’s probably too complicated and needs to be simplified.
2). Never use the logo as the replacement for the first (or any) letter in the name of your company. Say your railroad name is the “Eastern” RR, and you make a fancy E for your logo (ital., serifs, font, whatever). When you write it out, don’t make it “_E_ASTERN**”** becase people will generally see it as “Astern” with your company logo next to it and go, “Huh?”
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
Mine was simple to design. It’s the Texas Mining and Industrial shortline.
This is my hearld using the software Kenfolk suggested: 
Actually, I used an old pre-Windows program to create this. Now, I would use Paint Shop Pro to do it. In point of fact Paint Shop Pro has been bought out by another company and isn’t on the market any longer. 
My freelanced lumber company herald is similar in concept to McCloud River’s a real lumber company that was located on the opposite side of Mt Shasta from where my freelanced mill is located. Both have an image of Mt. Shasta and tree images and both are colorful. I doubt if McCloud River ever used their herald on their rolling stock. ( At least I never saw it used that way in photographs). My guess is that they may however, have used it in correspondence. My wife made the final images of this herald and had shirts embroidered for my operating crew when my home layout was included on the 2006 SER NMRA home layout tour. My freelanced lumber company uses box car lettering based on Carter Brothers summer winter white fruit cars with black crescent lettering which I have always thought was really neat. Note the passenger trucks which were common to early SP fruit cars. Peter Smith, Memphis 
The blue doesn’t stand out enough from the black. Use contrasting colors for better results.
Dude, PSP is still on the market and a trial version is still installed on all new Dell PCs: Yes, they were bought by Corel, but Corel is a good company…
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1184951547051#versionTabview=tab0&tabview=tab0
Back to the topic: I would use Adobe Illustrator and make what is called a vector graphic. Call your custom decal maker and say “say you accept an adobe illustrator file” and they will respond “YES!” becuase they are probably converting people’s jpg’s into .ai files before they work with them.