I picked up my January 2014 Model Railroader this afternoon and saw the Heritage Unit article and began to wonder, where can I find the custom made decals for the locomotives, mainly the railroad name ones? Also, are the Dash 8-40B and Dash 8-40BW picked because the decals fit, or can we select another locomotive to make our own Heritage Units with?
Painting and decal information is found here: http://mrr.trains.com/how-to/tips-projects/2013/11/mrt-heritage-fleet-gallery. Most/all of the railroad name decals look like they are custom run with the exception of the Turtle Creek, which is a Microscale mini-cal.
Custom run decals usually require a minimum quantity purchase, probably 25 sets of each “flavor”. I don’t know if any of the custom runners retain extra in stock to sell to the public. Probably not. They might be willing to sell you a run of 25, but I don’t know if that requires the permission of the individual(s) who had the custom run designed in the first place.
When the prototype railroads did their heritage fleets, I believe that they chose sets of their latest and most modern units to paint. Probably Cody chose the 8-40B and 8-40BW because they were supposed to represent the MR&T’s most modern units. Or it could be because Cody liked the way that model looked and, since he was doing the work, he got to pick his own choice.
Cody states on page 36 that he used the Dash 8-40Bs because they were already on hand, purchased ten years earlier for a previous painting project that never got off the ground.