Print Your Own Decals               __               
 by EIGHTYEIGHTFAN1

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  What was the greatest invention ever made for model railroaders? Why, it was the color laser-jet and ink-jet printers of course. Before the advent of the home based printers, model railroaders had a hard time, lettering, making home road icons for their railroad. Most, usually bought models already painted and printed for existing railroads. (Which probably explains a lot of Union Pacific and Santa Fe based layouts). Or, They either had to hand paint they’re own symbols and lettering, dice and splice decaling, or those with deep pockets, send artwork to professional decal printers.    Now that there are home printers, and decal paper made for them, modelers have an easier way to customize their locomotives and rolling stock, even make signs for their stores and businesses.

      Here’s a couple of ink-jet decal sheets. The Testors paper is on the left, the Vita-Cal on the right. Getting started printing your own decals, starts with art work, either your own or something downloaded from the internet. Careful when downloading, most artwork on the net  is copy-written, and can not be used without permission from the owner. There are sites that offer free artwork though. Most are not suitable for model railroads, unless you plan on doing a locomotive or rolling stock with commemorative or “special paint”.  I rather make my own though. Its easy, and once you get the hang of it, can be rather fun, The Timken car above, was all free-hand, using a business card as a guide.

 

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      This is a box car I decaled using decals made on my ink-jet printer and Vita-Cal  decal paper. The logo, slogan, reporting marks and even the stripe were all done on my color ink-jet printer.

      There are a couple of manufacturers of ink-jet/laser-jet printer decal systems. Vita-cal, Bel-cal and Testors make kits complete with paper and a cover spray. Bel-Cal and Vita-Cal both have 8 1/2 x 11-inch sheets of both white and clear decal sheets. Testors sell their paper in 8 x 6-inch white and clear paper. You can by the complete kits or both the cover spray and paper separately. Testors supply a program disc with their kit and contains a bevy of designs you could use. The Testors kit is more for the model car
builder, but you can still use the decal paper for model railroads. You can pick up the Testors kit at most retail outlets(IÔve seen it at Wal-Mart). Bev-Cal and Vita-Cal kits can be ordered from your local hobby store, or from Micro-Mart and Walthers.