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Custom Reefers For Your Locale.

Since our club runs once a month on the San Diego & Arizona Eastern layout at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, and since a portion of that layout features the big beer brewery in Tecate and the sidings that serve it, it seemed only natural that a few Tecate Beer Billboard reefers should be visible as well.

I ordered six of the nicely-done data-only wood reefers in yellow directly from Accurail, a pack of print-your-own decal paper from Micro-Mark, downloaded the Tecate Beer logo from Google images, worked up the "CERVECERIA CUAUHTEMOC MOCTEZUMA / C.C.M.X. #" bit with a graphics program, and printed the decals out on my computer's printer.

CAUTION! Turns out that the Micro-Mark decal paper *really sucks*. The decal film itself is *way* too thick, leaving a visible ridge at the decal's edges no matter how careful you are. Using Microscale's "Micro Set" and "Micro Sol" to get the decals to settle into the wood siding's irregularities has no real effect, and if you use the stronger Walther's "Solvaset", the decals just shrivel up and die. (Groan.)

Anyway, after much profanity and several rounds of stripping off shriveled decals and doing everything over again I ended up with a set of Tecate Beer reefers that will pass at least cursory inspection.

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Last Saturday I ran a "Tijuana Booze Train" (the inexpensive equivalent of the Napa Wine Train), consisting of the six Tecate Beer Reefers, two older Thomas wine tank cars, and a 50' flat carrying a one-shot airline bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial on it's side, label up.

Both the tourists and the other model railroaders got a chuckle out of it.

Reply to
Twibil
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I've experienced the same problem with the VitaCal paper.

When I finally put my glasses on and reread the fine print, it said to "dip" the decal in water then dry it of, set it in place and wait for

30-60 seconds. While this did much better, I still don't like the paper......just my opinion. I was so used to using Rail Graphics paper, I would let the home made decals set in the water way too long. I did try a second batch and use the "bold" print and had better results but still not what I wanted.

I did have good results asking an ebayer to print some passenger car names in black on his lazer jet paper and they came out beautiful. He's willing to do an 81/2 x 11 page of passenger car names in black for $10. For that price, it's worth it for me.

Reply to
BleuRaeder

I've had tons of fun printing my own decals for "local" cars. This can be a local business or something to lampoon a friend. It is a piece of cake to make up cars for fictional companies as well. Finally, it is usually pretty easy to make decals for your favorite road a lot cheaper than you can buy the decals commercially. I'm very fortunate to still have a working ALPS; their main advantage being that you can print white with them. This is obviously a big help when you model the Nickel Plate Road.

At one time, a long time ago, there were some guys on this group who shared decal art with the rest of us. The one I remember most was the infamous Haggis car but there were a few others. Do any of you rmember where that artwork was saved?

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel

At one time, a long time ago, there were some guys on this group who shared decal art with the rest of us. The one I remember most was the infamous Haggis car but there were a few others. Do any of you rmember where that artwork was saved?

dlm

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You mean this

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??

Val

Reply to
Val

Yes, that's it, but weren't there others? I thought that several guys had uploaded artwork for several different cars around this time.

dlm

Reply to
Dan Merkel

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