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