DPM Wall Sections: Big Walls

[doctorwayne]

....The dry-transfer technic is quite interesting. Is there a reason why you just don't burnish the dry transfer instead of using it as a masking device?

Yeah, not burnishing the letters make them easier to lift off. The reason that I didn't use them as dry transfers is because they were black and I wanted white lettering on a black background. White dry transfers aren't all that common nowadays, other than those made specifically for modellers. The local hobby shops still have C-D-S lettering for many freight cars, but if you want alphabets, the white ones have all been bought up. At one time, Letraset's catalogue offered an unbelieveable range of sizes, fonts, and colours, many suitable for model railroading, but computer printing has put an end to that. Most of my steam locos have been lettered the same way, too, as red letters don't show up all that well on a black tender.

Wayne

[sailormatlac]

....The dry-transfer technic is quite interesting. Is there a reason why you just don't burnish the dry transfer instead of using it as a masking device?

Yeah, not burnishing the letters make them easier to lift off. The reason that I didn't use them as dry transfers is because they were black and I wanted white lettering on a black background. White dry transfers aren't all that common nowadays, other than those made specifically for modellers. The local hobby shops still have C-D-S lettering for many freight cars, but if you want alphabets, the white ones have all been bought up. At one time, Letraset's catalogue offered an unbelieveable range of sizes, fonts, and colours, many suitable for model railroading, but computer printing has put an end to that. Most of my steam locos have been lettered the same way, too, as red letters don't show up all that well on a black tender.

Wayne

Now that makes sense! In some way, it's also easier to use them as mask instead of trying to brunish them into brick crevices...

I've been quite disappointed by local stores inventory. I only found Helvetica lettering in a relatively large size. I remember back in High school we had tons of them in any font you could imagine. I got few interesting sets by Woodland a long time ago, but all interesting fonts are now depleted. I've heard somewhere it was still possible to get cheap white dry-transfer in large electronic supply stores. I think the name was "Datak" or something like that. They came in different size, but mostly on the small side more fitted to HO scale.

Matt

[doctorwayne]

For quite some time, I used Letraset to letter my EG&E boxcars: 36 point "Folio Bold Condensed" for the reporting marks, and 34 point "Futura Medium" for the numbers. The heralds and slogans were custom lettering from C-D-S. I later ordered a second set of custom lettering which included both reporting marks and numerals, plus heralds in several sizes. The slogan and all black lettering was eliminated. A third order changed to smaller reporting marks and numerals more suited to my back-dated layout, but also included dimensional data.



Some cars got the large version of the herald, usually with a black background:


Reefers usually got large heralds with the black background, but numbers were from Letraset Mini-Sets, and varied in style, as I had fewer cars to letter:


One class of reefers got the small heralds in white with no black background, and also received ampersands in the reporting marks - most cars got a small square to represent the ampersand, as there are very few on any sheet and, unlike most letters and some numerals, very difficult to make-up using parts of other letters:




And, to get back a little closer to the original topic of this thread: if you're applying dry transfers to brick or any type of mildly irregular surface which makes burnishing especially tedious, strong decal setting solutions, such as Walthers Solvaset, have a similar effect on dry transfers as they do on decals.

Wayne