Turntable Decals

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Anybody know if decals for turntable data is commercially available?

Turntables were generally built by a few companies and sold to the railroads. I’m looking for this in particular:

If it isn’t available I can always create it using dry transfers onto an already-painted black styrene sheet, I guess, but if the decals are out there somewhere, they would be easier to use.

Anybody?
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2

Looks like something you could do on your computer. The lettering is mounted on a backboard, so all you would need to do is size it properly, cut it out and mount it on your turntable.

I use MS Publisher for things like that. Very easy to use. You can set font colors and background colors easily, too.

Hope that helps.

Darrell, quiet…for now

3

[#ditto]What he said.

4

However, the color of the lettering appears to be white. Most printers do not print in while ink. So I suppose an faint grey color might work. The old Alps printers are used by many modelers today to print decals in white.

5

Faint colors will come out, well, faint. For this “Downtown” board on the trolley, I started with a black background, then wrote the words in white and printed on clear decal paper. Since the printer doesn’t do white, the lettering comes out clear. I painted the background space on the trolley white, so it looks like white lettering on black:

To do the artwork, I used the simple Paint program that comes with Windows. I saved the picture file and then imported it into MS Word, where I sized it to fit the trolley.

6

You wouldn’t have to print it on decal paper. Like dgwinup noted it looks like it is on a backboard. I would print it on some photo paper spray it with simigloss and cut it out and glue it on. The paper becomes the backbord.

7

Sounds to me like the photo paper idea would work well. If you already have decal paper their are two ways you could also do this.

  1. If you have clear decal paper you can use a program like MS Word or Publisher. Create a text box, set the background color to black, and set the font color to white. The printer will leave your letters without any ink and print black on the surrounding area. You could then cut out the decal and mount it on white styrene. The white styrene will show through the letter.

  2. If you have white decal paper you could do the same as above and mount on any color backgroud.

8

I will have to try that one out, sounds like a similar solution that MisterBeasley did on the trolley.

Thanks!