Does anyone know of a source for people silhouette decals to put in HO passenger car windows? I remember my old Lionel train had them as part of the glazed windows. Thanks, Scotchman
They shouldn’t be too difficult to make yourself with your computer and printer. I would first just Google “silhouette” and then click on images. Select some you want and then play with photo-editing. Simple cutting, pasting and re-sizing can be done with MS Paint and MS Word. Make up a row of images aligned with the windows on the cars.
I’d first just print them out on regular paper and try them out inside the car to see how they lighting is. Depending on the brightness of the interior lights, you may want to try thicker or thinner paper to get the effect you want. Finally, I would use a strip of clear plastic to “glaze” the windows and then put the strip of silhouettes inside.
If that’s not good enough, you can print the strip on decal paper and apply that to your plastic glazing. You could use white decal paper, or you could “frost” the windows with Dull-Coat to get rid of the see-through problem.
I think Tyco and IHC had similar printed passenger strips in some of their cheaper offerings - probably other manufacturers too.
Question - do you just want a retro look with printed silhoulettes, or perhaps order batches of painted 1:100 sitting figures (for example, but you’d probably do better on eBay), and sit them on the seats - or if no interior, pieces of plastic tube (painted black and below the window line). I guess you also could get unpainted figures and spray them black (to avoid painting them).
BTW, I recommend 1:100 specifically so you don’t need to amputate any limbs or perform other body-carving to get the figures to fit, and they’ll look OK behind the window glazing.
For the heck of it, this web-site seems to document a bicentennial livery project for Tyco passenger cars, but it has images of what I think are the original passenger silhoutte window inserts for those types of cars.