Model Railroader has an interesting article here…
http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=a&id=380
I’ve never tried decaling but it looks like a fine way to add the utmost realism to a buildings walls. I agree with the person that wrote the article, it may look soooo good you’ll have to do all your other buildings. Anyone tried this yet?
JaRRell
I have done many of my older buildings with old decal ads. It adds a nice touch to the walls so they don’t appear so stark. His techniques in the article are much better than mine, But like I said it makes thing appear more " real ".
I haven’t used the technique for the brick face, but I’ve put a number of signs on buildings.
I put this one on a wood-plank retaining wall I made from coffee stirrers:
That’s an excellent article, something I’ve considered trying with my own buildings for the past few years but never got around to it. Now I see someone has already done it and written about it.
One thing I noticed is that he bought himself an Alps printer - I thought those were out of production? My approach would be to use Testors white-background decal paper with my Epson inkjet (those DuraBrite inks hold up quite well under the bonding solution).
I have only have one comment on the method. ALPS printers are no longer available. I would love to know where to get one because the white, silver and gold foil for printing decals is still available.
Unless I am missing something, the simple solution is to paint the wall a medium gray or whatever color matches the mortar in the photos and the mortar lines in the decal will be clear and the paint will show though.
The biggest problem with prototype photography is to get a square shot with as little skewing of the image as possible. An old style camera with a tilting lens board would be ideal to use because the lines can be trued up on the negative and not in some expensive imaging software.