Custom Transfers

Information on sources for hard to find or unusual items.
Lindsay G
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:16 am

Custom Transfers

Postby Lindsay G » Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:33 am

Elsewhere, Guy Rixon has been wondering about transfers for some old goods stock. Concurrently, a few of us, with a Caley persuasion, are also anguishing over the lack of suitable transfers on the market. There are a few suppliers who are willing to produce transfers in line with need but they seem to be quite costly and will only produce transfer sheets in line with the size of others that they produce which can be quite small and so restricted in variety.

I've come across a website run by Precision Labels which offers a custom printing service which on the face of things would work out at £25 for an A4 page of white prints (all CR goods stock is white). Within an A4 sheet, one could cram a lot of alpha-numeric material so the £25 cost might not actually be all that high (a tiny sheet of Archers rivets costs £17!). However, as yet, I've not gone into what you need to provide for them to produce the material you are after. Before I, or others, get involved in the nuts and bolts of it all, does anyone have any experience of using this website, or indeed obtaining similar transfers from other suppliers?

Cheers,

Lindsay

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Craig Warton
Posts: 204
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:58 pm

Re: Custom Transfers

Postby Craig Warton » Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:45 am

Lindsay,
i have had custom transfers done by Fox Transfers. these were the two types of Not common user marking used by the GWR. I was happy with the pricing, so I would suggest sending them some information on what you want. The quality is excellent, as I find the Fox Transfers usually are.

Regards,

Craig Warton

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Paul Willis
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Re: Custom Transfers

Postby Paul Willis » Thu Jan 18, 2018 5:35 am

Lindsay G wrote:Elsewhere, Guy Rixon has been wondering about transfers for some old goods stock. Concurrently, a few of us, with a Caley persuasion, are also anguishing over the lack of suitable transfers on the market. There are a few suppliers who are willing to produce transfers in line with need but they seem to be quite costly and will only produce transfer sheets in line with the size of others that they produce which can be quite small and so restricted in variety.


I spent some time at the Stevenage Show last weekend chatting with Simon from Old Time Workshop http://www.oldtimeworkshop.co.uk/

Initially, I was rifling through his boxes of transfers to see what was pre-Grouping, as he produces some fairly obscure ones in different sizes. However there is nothing in the range currently which is pre-Grouping in period.

However Simon would consider the production of sheets in future, if people were able to indicate what they needed, and there was access to photos or other source material. Clearly he doesn't have copies of every reference book available, andcan't be expected to research them all.

But he was keen on the idea of producing sheets for pre-Grouping companies (and only pre-Grouping, so you don't have the situation like the HMRS where seven eights of the sheet are useless for your prototypes - I'm thinking of the GWR sheet in particular here) and therefore it works out quite expensive per wagon. He would be worth giving a call.

Cheers
Flymo
Beware of Trains - occasional modelling in progress!
www.5522models.co.uk

hughesp87
Posts: 137
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:25 pm

Re: Custom Transfers

Postby hughesp87 » Thu Jan 18, 2018 9:34 am

Lindsay,

I have had a recent exchange of e-mails with Precision Labels as a result of my need for some white rolling stock transfers for my p87 Danish project.

These require a particular font, which to my knowledge is not downloadable from anywhere. As a consequence I have had to redraw the full alphabet in CAD, as a trace over a photo provided by a friend in Denmark. I can now assemble the letters and numbers into the sets required for wagons and coaches.

Precision Labels require a simple pdf file of the finished artwork, and they tell me that for white transfers they can print from a file with black lettering. I haven't got as far as submitting a file yet, so can't comment on delivery or final quality, but at least the final process seems quite straightforward. If your lettering comes in a readily available font, then all the more so!

Regards,

Geraint
Geraint Hughes
Cromford & High Peak in P4
Danish Railways in P87

andrewnummelin
Posts: 374
Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:43 am

Re: Custom Transfers

Postby andrewnummelin » Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:33 am

The 4D Model shop is another alternative for dry transfers http://modelshop.co.uk/Static/WorkShop/Dry-Transfers. Expensive if you only want enough for a single item but good value if you can fill a sheet. I did enough for a rake of wagons and a couple are illustrated below.
Their art work check before printing picked up on one badly drawn "e" but I decided that as I was in a hurry I wouldn't redraw it. It's one of the smallest deficiencies in the modelling!
W42.jpg

W41-002.JPG
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Regards,

Andrew Nummelin

tmcsean
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:34 pm

Re: Custom Transfers

Postby tmcsean » Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:37 am

The thread has given lots of useful information about where you can go to get white waterslide or rub-on lettering. Finding exactly the right typeface for old lettering can be a problem, as I found when researching and drawing up the Hollar Models posters. CorelDraw have a student version which is reasonably cheap and includes 900 typefaces.

I have often found that a typeface will nearly match what I am trying to copy, with only one or two characters that aren't quite right. CAD can provide a perfect solution, but I've never used any CAD system and balked at the effort required to to learn it. There are alternatives:

(a) Use the nearly-right typeface because only a few people will ever notice (NB I didn't take this option myself because I knew that the error would be the only part of the lettering I would see once it was on the wagon).

(b) Use the CorelDraw option to change a letter into vector-drawn curves. This allows you, for example, to get the bottom curve of an S just right with only a bit of practice. The drawback is that it's a one-off modification and I have never managed to incorporate the change into the TTF file for future use. You have to cut and paste it. With these limitations, it works fine.

(c) Do it properly and buy one of the applications which allow you to create anew or modify an existing typeface. I've never used one, but a Google search on "typeface design and modification software" is a reasonable starting point. Not all of the apps are cheap, and not all are any good - apparently - but you can get brilliant results if you are a perfectionist. It's why Cambridge Custom Transfers look significantly more like BR wagon lettering and other products.

Tony

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Guy Rixon
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Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:40 pm

Re: Custom Transfers

Postby Guy Rixon » Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:57 am

To make transfers for a specific vehicle, where the lettering is all one colour, I can think of another way.

Start with a square-on photograph of the vehicle. Using Photoshop's "magic" extractor, extract the lettering leaving the rest transparent. Fill the lettering with the colour of choice. Save in a format acceptable to the printing company.

The extractor in Photoshop is fairly easy to use, even for somebody like me who hates GUI graphics tools. You can do as much tidying up of the extracted outline as you want, but the machine will do most of the work.

This presumes that the transfers can be printed from a raster image rather than a vector image. If not, then one would need to convert the raster to a vector outline, possibly in Inkscape.

I have not tried this technique; maybe this weekend...


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