#135 ~ Signs of Destiny

 Researching and Making Decals for Route Numbers and Destination Signs

In the Vast Majority of Photos of the Class 1's, the Cars are Sporting Destination Signs. So then Shall My Cars.

But this turned out to be a big research project to determine what exactly these destination read.

Fortunately I have accumulated a lot of photos of these cars over the years. So I can actually read what most of the destination signs read.  But I don't have photos of all the routes, so I have to make educated guesses as to the rest.

The San Diego Electric Railway seemed to change some of its routes rather often making it kind of difficult to determine what exactly the routes where when these cars were new.

Schedules published during that era gave some helpful route descriptions. What I had to do was determine what they would have put on the signs.

And this colorful display is what I came up with. (Click to make Big). The colors are a complete guess though- routes weren't color coded back then like they are now. So I may have gone overboard with the colors. But it shor is purty!

Detail view. I will be making these decals available to you through Custom Traxx very soon.

Yes sir!  Destined to you very soon!

Dandy

SDERy Class 1 Car #135 ~ Decals

 Metallic Gold Decals for #135

Designing and printing metallic gold decals will be a new adventure for me.

Christian Chaffee who saved the three remaining SDERy Class 1's from destruction is shown here with an original panel inlaid with gold-leaf filigree. 

Because these decals have a metallic color I'm having to send them out to be printed. The company I chose to print them is none other than the "couple people" Kadee! They have an ALPs printer capable of printing metallic colors.

Fortunately for us, good photos exist that clearly show how the lettering and striping was laid out. Because the drawings I do are being sent to a printer, my drawings have to be "printer ready". So I chose to draw them with Adobe Illustrator. I loaded the photos into Illustrator and scaled them to HO scale. Then I was essentially able to "trace" the photos. 

I had to make a compromise though.  Kadee can only print 3 colors with the ALPs printer.  The original cars have brown with gold-leaf.  But printing brown is a three color process. So brown + gold = 4 colors. So I had to go with black + gold. Luckily it turned out great!:

And here are the printed decals I got back from Kadee!  There are enough for 5 cars on one sheet. I will cut this up so that they can be sold, most likely through Custom Traxx.

Next comes making a sheet of Route and Destination Signs decals. That'll be a big project to research!

Yes sir!

A BIG project! 

Dandy