Authentic transfers

[jhb171achill]

I'm just wondering aloud (partly in general, partly for our good colleagues here who make transfers) what chance there is of any of the following becoming available..... 

All too often we see pristine wagons with crystal clear snow white logos and numerals. This would virtually never be the case in real life, except for the day the new wagon left the building shops in Inchicore. Severe weathering and fading is what's needed to approach any degree of operational  realism.

So, what I seek are:

Weathered flying snail STENCILS as applied to wagons after 1955 or so.

Weathered sets of numbers of both the fonts used by CIE on wagons from the 1940s to the present day.

Weathered CIE roundels both in all-white, and white lettering surrounded with tan "wheel" as used on H and Palvans in the 1960s.

Thoughts?

If these things were cheap enough to make, I'd get a quantity done and sell off what I didn't need.

Letraset standard fonts, modern "arial" style gleaming white print just looks awful.

[Noel]

Good point re weathering.  Would weathering wagons after applying decals make sense to tone down the pristine white decals?

[Weshty]

Hmmmmmmm.  sounds like I need to fill a gap here.  Printing tonight then.

[Garfield]

No need, though. The decals get weathered along with the rest of the wagon when the weathering paints/powders, etc. are being applied. And it's a straightforward process to distress them if desired...

[Weshty]

Garfield, I don't doubt it, but thinking of non IRM related yokes, H Vans, 7 plankers etc.

[Garfield]

19 minutes ago, Weshty said:

Garfield, I don't doubt it, but thinking of non IRM related yokes, H Vans, 7 plankers etc.

That's what I'm referring to.

[Glenderg]

Weathered decals? Wut? 

The solution might be an etched nickel silver plate, so one could lightly sponge on the desired amount and tone of paint. 

Existing decals can be distressed prior to use by rubbing them in your hands prior to soaking, but this can be hit and miss. 

 

[Weshty]

Nope, thinking more shading to emulate wear and tear, a little touch of verisimilitude.

[Mike 84C]

How about a bit of distressing with a fiberglass pen? works for me.

[Broithe]

3 minutes ago, Mike 84C said:

How about a bit of distressing with a fiberglass pen? works for me.

Ah, that's how you stay so fresh-faced..

[jhb171achill]

9 hours ago, Weshty said:

Hmmmmmmm.  sounds like I need to fill a gap here.  Printing tonight then.

Excellent, Weshty, that was quick! I'll be along to you for some in the Noo Year....

Is it possible to do the stencil version of the snail?

Weathering of wagons after applying transfers is of course feasible, but they used to get so bad, so faded, that watery wishy-washy grubby looking numerals and decals would also be a distinct advantage. Of course, anyone striving for visual accuracy in goods trains would need to weather the lot anyway!

9 hours ago, Garfield said:

No need, though. The decals get weathered along with the rest of the wagon when the weathering paints/powders, etc. are being applied. And it's a straightforward process to distress them if desired...

Yes, I was thinking of stock other than the IRM stuff. The ballasts are already sufficiently "used" looking, with accurate reproductions of ad-hoc repainting of just a patch to put a number on, as typical for many years. Bubbles, would of course be weathered within an inch of their lives, heartbreaking as it would be to stir a 3-pack of them in a bucket of watery cement*!

What I had in mind were wooden open wagons, Palvans, old wooden goods vans, repainted ex-GNR stuff, H vans and the likes.

 

(*  Do not try this at home. No bubbles were harmed in the making of this comment. May contain traces of nuts. For illustrative purposes only. Terms and conditions apply.)

[Mayner]

Blackham Transfers did/may still do weathered & un-weathered CIE dry-print transfers including solid and stencil snails, Bell & B&I container lettering http://www.blackham.co/quickorder.html. SSM produce water slide decals, each type have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Dry transfers are similar to letraset with little or no margin for error in fitting. Water slide transfers or decals are on a carrier film and are more user friendly to fit rather than dry print.

The surface need to be finished with a gloss varnish before the decals are fixed in place then sealed in place with a varnish or clear coat.

Its tricky to accurately align wagon and coach numbers, tare information etc so its better to order a custom sheet of lettering with wagon or coach numbers from Blackham or SSM.

Des produced a custom sheet of decals for lettering my fleet of Cavan & Leitrim narrow gauge coal wagons.

The decals on the coal wagons were sealed with Testors Dull-Cote and the wagons weathered with an air brush.

 

[jhb171achill]

Another aspect to this; unless I'm missing something, nobody seems to do the "eau-de-nil" light green snails for the sides of carriages, diesel locos and steam engines. If I am mistaken, and someone does, maybe someone might enlighten me.

To transfer manufacturers - the gold lining on light green snails on buses, older carriages, and steam engine tenders - is it practical to make things this small in one colour and lined in another? I'm just curious - in reality, such a tender is likely to be heavily weathered anyway and lining would probably not be visible anyway.

[Noel]

18 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

Another aspect to this; unless I'm missing something, nobody seems to do the "eau-de-nil" light green snails for the sides of carriages, diesel locos and steam engines. If I am mistaken, and someone does, maybe someone might enlighten me.

To transfer manufacturers - the gold lining on light green snails on buses, older carriages, and steam engine tenders - is it practical to make things this small in one colour and lined in another? I'm just curious - in reality, such a tender is likely to be heavily weathered anyway and lining would probably not be visible anyway.

I could not find "Eau-de-nil" diesel loco transfer sets on RailTec or SSM websites. 

[jhb171achill]

Possibly one of our excellent makers-of-things here might oblige.... am I right in thinking that it's not necessary to do a large batch of these things?

We have white snails for wagons, and yellow ones for the fronts of 121s and grey / yellow tour buses. There's unlikely to be an enormous market for those, so maybe it's feasible to do small amounts of something? Just a thought.

[Rails_of_Belfast]

Hello & Good Mornnin Irish Railway Modeller.I am Wnting 2 Know If Theses 11 WRENN Railways Wagons (W5033) Brown Ventilated Van ("H" Van) Pass 4 CIE Rollin  Stock as I Bought Frm My Club In Belfast.

Pictures 2 Follow:Will not let me download pictures.😠😯☹🙁😟

Edited January 27, 2018 by Rails_of_Belfast

[johnminnitt]

On 1/25/2018 at 10:16 PM, jhb171achill said:

Another aspect to this; unless I'm missing something, nobody seems to do the "eau-de-nil" light green snails for the sides of carriages, diesel locos and steam engines. If I am mistaken, and someone does, maybe someone might enlighten me.

 

Railtec list them, I don't know how good they are I've not used any.

http://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=1205

Or did you mean lined ones, I suppose you probably know of these Railtec ones?

Edited January 27, 2018 by johnminnitt

[DB JOE]

Hello Johnminnitt

Studio Scale Models do the eau-de nil- snails and lining for coaches and loco's I've bought them and have found them very good

[Robert Shrives]

Steve at Railtec had produced a great range and being filmless do not leave a shape for varnish to highlight ! In 2mm lovely items and some 3D print transfers which are well liked. He is too busy by his own word so specials are 8 - 10 weeks generally.

Prices are competitive as well compared to other large Island producers ! 

Robert  

[jhb171achill]

Many thanks, gentlemen. I wasn't aware of the railtec ones - I had looked up their website but either it was before they did them or else i accidentally overlooked them.

Great stuff!

[railtec-transfers]

Thanks Robert. Indeed there are some eau de nil spot printed options on the Railtec web site, as well as a large variety of other areas of potential interest.

As Robert mentions, since approx the past 18 months, Railtec product is all spot printed, meaning there's no superfluous carrier film to deal with. The colours are more vibrant, the white is "whiter", the transfers have perfect print registration, the print now withstands regular handling and is also compatible with enamels - so numerous benefits over what was used before. It was an absolute colossal investment in state-of-the-art tech and the difference has been described as "night and day".

Re the point somebody made on small transfers being outlined - the new tech can handle this no problem. In fact it can print so fine that a magnifying glass would be required.

As for distressed transfers, it's a nice idea and something which Railtec already makes for very limited segments of the British market such as faded EWS numbers, but the biggest hurdle here is that no matter how many variants of distressing we make, it's unlikely that it will ever be quite uniform with the remainder of the weathering that the modeller has applied. From exhibiting at shows for a number of years, I would say that 99% of modellers prefer to apply a pristine transfer and then weather the model as a whole, resulting in a uniform finish.

Edited January 27, 2018 by railtec-transfers

[jhb171achill]

38 minutes ago, railtec-transfers said:

Thanks Robert. Indeed there are some eau de nil spot printed options on the Railtec web site, as well as a large variety of other areas of potential interest.

As Robert mentions, since approx the past 18 months, Railtec product is all spot printed, meaning there's no superfluous carrier film to deal with. The colours are more vibrant, the white is "whiter", the transfers have perfect print registration, the print now withstands regular handling and is also compatible with enamels - so numerous benefits over what was used before. It was an absolute colossal investment in state-of-the-art tech and the difference has been described as "night and day".

Re the point somebody made on small transfers being outlined - the new tech can handle this no problem. In fact it can print so fine that a magnifying glass would be required.

As for distressed transfers, it's a nice idea and something which Railtec already makes for very limited segments of the British market such as faded EWS numbers, but the biggest hurdle here is that no matter how many variants of distressing we make, it's unlikely that it will ever be quite uniform with the remainder of the weathering that the modeller has applied. From exhibiting at shows for a number of years, I would say that 99% of modellers prefer to apply a pristine transfer and then weather the model as a whole, resulting in a uniform finish.

Thank you Railtec, that's very informative.

I get the comment made above that you're busy - a very good complaint, no doubt. However, I wonder, for information, what would be involved in doing a run of standard "eau-de-nil" snails, with the gold lining. If it's too time-consuming or commercially unviable, naturally it ain't going to happen. maybe you need a minimum order of them to make it commercially sensible for you?

With this, gold-lined light green coach lining for the older dark green livery would be good to have too; I must look up the dimensions of each line, for above and below windows.

Certainly, I'd be interested in gold lined anything as above, should you decide to do some at any stage.

[Noel]

57 minutes ago, railtec-transfers said:

As Robert mentions, since approx the past 18 months, Railtec product is all spot printed, meaning there's no superfluous carrier film to deal with. The colours are more vibrant, the white is "whiter", the transfers have perfect print registration, the print now withstands regular handling and is also compatible with enamels - so numerous benefits over what was used before. It was an absolute colossal investment in state-of-the-art tech and the difference has been described as "night and day".

Hi Steve.  How are these applied if they are not on a film?  Are they still waterslide transfers? Thanks.  Noel

[railtec-transfers]

The lead time on new work really depends. I won't disappear down a loosely related rabbit hole but just to give some context, requests for simple bespoke numbering usually gets turned around within 24hrs. Orders for stock items (i.e. packs already available on the web site) typically go out same day. The lead time can really begin to elongate particularly when research is required, a new design of a logo or other pattern, and any subsequent testing (what might look great in artwork doesn't necessarily always roll off the printer as you might expect and may need a lot of counter-intuitive trial and error to get printed optimally).

To answer your specific question about lined eau de nil snails, my gut says it would probably be pretty quick and easy as I already have the artwork and all I'd need to do is outline it, and then make a test print. There would be no minimum order qty. Where I'd need your guidance is on what size you would need and what you understand as "gold" - as many modellers' interpretation of golds, yellows and straws tend to vary.

 

Thanks,

Steve

2 minutes ago, Noel said:

Hi Steve.  How are these applied if they are not on a film?  Are they still waterslide transfers? Thanks.  Noel

 

Hiya Noel, they still have a very light film but in the example of a string of numbers "12345", it would only be present between those numbers and nowhere outside of that. Before, the carrier film was the size of the entire sheet meaning that people had to cut as close to the print as possible in order to minimise the carrier - but this is no longer the case. If you've used Fox it's the same concept, though they use a completely different process and I'm not sure if they can print as little as 1% carrier like the Railtec new tech can.

[jhb171achill]

11 hours ago, Rails_of_Belfast said:

Hello & Good Mornnin Irish Railway Modeller.I am Wnting 2 Know If Theses 11 WRENN Railways Wagons (W5033) Brown Ventilated Van ("H" Van) Pass 4 CIE Rollin  Stock as I Bought Frm My Club In Belfast.

Pictures 2 Follow:Will not let me download pictures.😠😯☹🙁😟

As far as RTR British stuff goes, these are as close to some CIE vans as anything, indeed, in my teens I had a good few of them on my then layout. Dip them in a pot of grey paint or brown (post-1970), stick on CIE logos (snail or roundel, depending on era) and you're there. However with corrugated ends, they resemble not so much actual "H" vans but ex-GNR cement vans which ran among them right into the 1970s to the end of loose-coupled goods traffic. Dundalk built a good lot of these in the 1951-4 period, and while few GNR goods wagons saw much continuity in CIE, these did.

For authenticity, the numbers will be lower and suffixed by "N", thus instead of numbering it something like 18776, it'll be 109N....

I saw one at thurles with a very low number - 66N. It was by this stage (about 1977) awaiting scrapping, so I wish I had hacked off the CIE numberplate which by this stage had been affixed to it!

[railtec-transfers]

This may help illustrate the difference between the old and new tech. I should have also added that it also provides the option to make certain elements completely filmless. In the example attached if I wanted to make just the name PERSEUS, there would be no need to have any carrier at all. In this example there's a small amount of carrier between the name PERSEUS and the small Tinsley diamond immediately above it so that the detail can be applied in one easy hit, but it's that thin it's scarcely noticeable. In fact this was a quick test I made on a completely unglossed model.

I put quite a few examples (incl latest developments) up on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/railtectransfers/