149th Street Harlem Station

[sailormatlac]

Looking good, going to be a nice addition to the layout

Thanks! It really brings life to the layout!

Very nicely-done, Matt. That looks as good as any lettering that's commercially available.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne! Once again, it prooves a modeler's weapon of choice is his own creativity.

Here's a WIP I put together about the way I made the decals.

The original Walthers decals was very thick and didn't soften very much whatever amount of Solvaset I used. You can see the black was showing through the artwork. I had to remove the decal the hard way, sand the part and repaint. Yes, the decal peeled off in two layers, the last one harder to remove.



My printer (black laser) can’t make white or brass-color decals. With some creativity, I decided to spray transparent decal sheets with white and gold paint. Then print black decals on another decal sheet. The next step was to merge the decals together by applying the black artwork on the colored decal. As crazy as it may sound, it worked far better than I thought. Sure, the decals are a little bit on the thick side (2 films + ink + paint + dullcote) but far less than the stock Walthers ones. If you've seen my threads some years ago about my QRL&PCo gondolas and hoppers, it is a similar approach.

Here you can see the three decal sheets ready to be merged (black artwork, white and Model Master Gold #1744 which is a very good color for clean brass).



I applied water and solvaset on the colored decal sheet then applied the black artwork on it. No fear because the paint already sealed the decal and water + solvaset didn't affect that layer.



A close up shot of the brass plates:



With a brand new blade, I cut the decal to remove the black contour. I always try to trim the maximum possible of decal film. It makes the end result better.



The decals are a little bit thick as previously said, but application was easy since the decals lay on flat surface devoid of rivets. It's not perfect, but when you can have clean edges, just like the brass plate and Erie's diamond, it works wonder. It is also well suited for models on which the artwork is framed by ribs like hoppers and exterior posts cars.



Now the model is correctly lettered according to prototype and I can move forward with the project. My goal is to complete the tugboat on Canada Day.

Matt