HO scale vehicle license plate decals

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Santa Fe Jack

Member
Jul 20, 2006
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Lost Almost, New Mexico
Hey, everyone

I've noticed that in my little fleet of vehicles for the HO layout very few of them have license plates. These could be easily added as decals.

Would you suggest making my own decals (perhaps too much trouble?) or a source for acquiring some? Any ideas?

Thy just look like something is missing. And it is.

- John
 
That's certainly a fun way to make an image of a particular plate!

But then, you still have to do the decal printouts. Perhaps that is not as big a deal as I expect. Don't you need special ink cartridges as well as special paper for a given inkjet?
 
I would think that you could do license plates on regular or even photo paper and cut them out. You wouldn't need the "detail hugging" ability of the decals, since in real life we're taking about a chunk of metal anyway...

Andrew
 
I did something similar for the plackards that are on tank cars. I model in HO scale and found typical DOT hazard plackarks that I copyied the image in a jpg format and pasted on a WORD document. Then I resized to fit the diamond shield that are on the tank car frame and printed on a color printer at the highest resolution I could. They printed great. Using a hobby knife I trimmed them off the paper and glued to the shields. They look super!!

Here is the site I got the plackards from: http://ian-albert.com/misc/hazmat.php
 
Santa Fe Jack said:
Well, yes. Exactly. Those look good, though I think I would like a mix of states rather than having to get just one state on a sheet. Thanks for the link!

- John
Click to expand...

Yeah, but at $2 per state it's not that expensive.

Cheers
 
Santa Fe Jack said:
Well, yes. Exactly. Those look good, though I think I would like a mix of states rather than having to get just one state on a sheet. Thanks for the link!

- John
Click to expand...

I think it depends on what part of the country you are modeling. The western states are so big in area that it is not unusual to see all of the cars on the road to have a home state license, especially in an area well away from the border. In the Northeast, the states are smaller, and it is common to see a mix of license plates. Even in the case of states as large as New York or Pennsylvania, if you go down around NYC or Philadelphia, you may find commuters from neighboring states in the morning and evening commute.
 
Russ Bellinis said:
I think it depends on what part of the country you are modeling. The western states are so big in area that it is not unusual to see all of the cars on the road to have a home state license, especially in an area well away from the border. In the Northeast, the states are smaller, and it is common to see a mix of license plates. Even in the case of states as large as New York or Pennsylvania, if you go down around NYC or Philadelphia, you may find commuters from neighboring states in the morning and evening commute.
Click to expand...
Wait are we talking about SOCAL? I swear I see more NON California plates here in SD. From AZ, to Baja Mexico, to... GUAM! However San Diego IS a military town.
 
Ever done the licence plate game where you make up a list of the 50 states and cross them off when you see them? It took me and my wife two years to get them all...and amazingly Hawaii was in a grocery store parking lot a mile from our house!!!! It took forever to get Vermont though!
I recall an issue of Model Railroader printed up plates of various scales that you could cut out of the mag.
Ralph (in MN)
 
I'm just curious if anyone has had any luck resizing an image and using it as the license plate? Every time I try to resize an image of a plate I'd like to use, the image becomes too distorted to make out what it is.

That jbot website is not taking orders as of right now.
 
Older plates. Can't remember where it came from

plates.jpg
 
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