I have 16 MDC harriman and 50’ pulllman passenger cars and bachmann spectrum modern excursion cars i would like to decal with name of my fictional railroad Leelanau County Railway. Does anyone know what size od decal or dry transfer lettering i would need to fit in the tiny letterboad space on the MDC 60’ and 50’ coaches and spectrum excursion cars? I am thinking of using microscale N scale decal set #70102 to put my railroad’s name on the cars.
Why not simply measure the available space, as decal and dry transfer alphabet sets are usually sold in sheets of stated like-sizes?
I measured my lone Harriman baggage car at .140", or just over 3mm. This is just over 1/8".
The old-time Pullman cars have a letterboard .145" high, which translates to about 9/64" or around 3.5mm.
!/8" is a common size for decal and dry transfer alphabet sets, and will fit both cars. Make sure when you order that you get enough to letter all 16 cars.
For each car you will need eight "A"s, six "L"s, and four each of "E"s, "N"s, "U"s, and "Y"s, plus two each of "C"s, "O"s, "T"s, "R"s, "I"s, and "W"s.
While the number of lettering styles available are much more limited than in the past, you should be able to find 1/8" lettering in either serif or non-serif styles, and perhaps both styles in a number of different colours.
Lettering with alphabet sets can be pretty time-consuming, but you don’t need to do it all in one sitting. I’ve done almost six dozen passenger cars in variations of this scheme, using dry transfer alphabet sets:
For what it’s worth, decals are generally easier to apply, as you get almost unlimited opportunities to re-align them simply by re-wetting them. With dry transfers, you get one shot to get it straight and properly spaced.
You may or may not be aware, but when lettering with individual letters, the spaces between letters are not necessarily all the same. You can find an explantion of this on-line. I like to make use of masking tape as a temporary alignment tool, as shown on this caboose: