I've had a lot of people ask me what decals I use to do my models so I'm going to do a little write up. I use microscale N scale decals. Now hold on, don't get excited. The decal sheet has several different fonts. You won't able to use them all because some are too big but usually I'm able to have enough to do 2 trains. You have to look at each different decal sheet to see if it has what you need. I've had success with n&w diesels, steam and the caboose, chessie system diesel and caboose, nkp, and dt&i. All of them have the correct Z scale size decals! Look at the pictures. Chessie system clearly shows two sizes. The smaller is exactly the same size as the MTL gp35 and the caboose decal was exactly the same as the azl caboose. The n&w diesel decals had 3 different NW fonts. The middle and smallest were absolutely perfect for the gp38. View attachment 64574 View attachment 64575
Hi. I need to make a final decision as to the name of my RR, then have decals made. I recently used the dry transfer type for the first time. They came with the Woodland Scenics HO whistle stop depot. I really like the simplicity of simply rubbing them on...Do you know how well they'd work for RR name on cars/tenders/stations/RR initials ? How do I obtain these ? Mark
Im afraid I won't be much help with that. I went to my local supply store today and picked up some testors decal sheets. 3 clear amd 3 white background that I'm going to try making my own water slide decals using photo shop.
I have a lot of experience with dry transfers applied to concept models for product design and they work really great for that. In fact decals cant even come close. Much easier to work with and easy to take off if you make a mistake. But not very durable. That being said, I did have some custom dry transfers made to try and apply to my 250 ton Industrial Brownhoist cranes. Not so good in z scale. I hate decals but these where a lot harder to apply because they are so small. Almost impossible to apply in a small recessed area and even though I did not try it, I would say it probably would not work well at all applying it over ribs or into parting lines. I'm a very stubborn person who does not give up easily but honestly, I gave up on this $80 experiment pretty quickly.... It just was not worth having to sand down and repaint everything after a couple of tries started to ruin my finish. But if your persistent enough, apply to only flat smooth surfaces and you can find someone who has fine enough silk screens to make the dry transfers for Z scale, you could end up with a superior result over decals.
I won a set of commercial dry transfers for an N scale box bar in Sacramento a few years back. In my experiments, they worked well on flat surfaces provided I could apply all the characters in one placement. They worked on corrugated surfaces when applied using a toothpick, but didn't look quite right because the graphics needed to "stretch". For other rough surfaces, I'd describe the results as looking like well weathered lettering. Mark
Mark, was the paper backing really thin? The transfers I had made where on a really thick paper. It would have made it almost impossible to bend tight enough to go up and over ribs and down into nooks and crannies.... I think I would have been much easier to work with if the paper was not so stiff. The custom print quality was not so great for real small details like the UP shield and KCS logo. It was no better then custom decals. But in all fairness, the person I had do the sheet was not set up with silkscreens small enough intended for Z scale. So the print quality came out better then I expected...
I hadn't used dry transfers for modeling before, so I don't know what thin is. It was about like kitchen wax paper and wouldn't conform to the corrugation for more than a couple of channels at a time.
That does sound a lot thinner. The paper backing on my transfers was more like 4 or 5 times that thickness and not nearly as pliable. But in all fairness to the person that made my transfers, they normally make transfers for RC planes at a much larger then Z scale where its not that as much of an issue. And for $80 dollars for a custom sheet of 8.5 "x11" dry transfers for any scale is insanely cheap... I just couldn't get it to work....
