Filling Station

On 6/4/2008 11:57 AM Hawkeye spake thus:

Nice model. Just one criticism, and it's something I see far too often on otherwise fine models: the typeface used for the sign. There's no way a station of this vintage would ever use that type; just look at some old pictures. Looks like it came off someone's inkjet printer from Microsoft something-or-other.

For some reason, a lot of otherwise great modelers have a huge blind spot in this area. A little more care in selecting the type of letters used on signs can make a big difference in "believeability". Someday I'm gonna write a full-scale rant on this ...

When I first opened Microstuffed Publisher I thought "Wow, look at all those fonts, more than anyone could ever need. The first time I wanted to do some model decals I plodded through font after font after font. I think one font came close on about 15 of 52 letters. Even for general lettering for a 1930 layout there's almost nothing. Try fitting any MS font on a sign of a given dimension such as a sign panel in a plastic kit and the letters won't fit. Either you've got half a letter over the edge or you have too small lettering for the panel.

Feel free to write and post your rant.

Regards, Greg.P.

You need Corel Draw - lots of extra fonts, and you can manipulate them and resize them, change individual letter spacing, etc., etc., as required.

Could you use mspaint (or my preference photoshop) and use the lettering tool to write your text then shrink the image to the size needed to fit the kit. If you start close, you should not get much distortion. ??

On 6/4/2008 2:52 PM Big_Al spake thus:

Probably; most software can be cajoled, persuaded or forced to do what you want it to, but it would be a gigantic pain in the ass. First of all, Paint deals with bitmaps only (pixels), which is a lot more difficult to work with.

Steve's right: Corel (or equivalent, like Illustrator, or other shareware programs available that deal with vector graphics) is the way to go. Shrink, stretch, adjust line thickness, line color, fill color, etc. And Corel does (at least used to) come with lotsa lotsa fonts.

For that matter, if I only had Micro$oft Office (as Greg seems to have), I'd use Word in favor of Publisher. It's not designed for that kind of graphic manipulation, but it does allow sizing text to just about any size in small increments (hint: set the "grid spacing" to a smaller setting than the default).

On 6/4/2008 1:19 PM Greg Procter spake thus:

I will, but later.

Regarding your attempts, all I can say is that PubSlasher is the wrong tool for *any* job. As stated downthread, Corel Draw is a much better tool. (I believe you can get copies of older versions for really cheap online.) Even Word seems to do a better job at resizing text, strangely enough.

Regarding fonts, besides all the fonts that come with Corel, including lots of "decorative" fonts (in addition to the usual serif, sans serif and script ones), a lot of fonts are available for free online in various places. Some time ago I found a free download of a pretty good Railroad Gothic font, which of course would be very suitable for a lot of older sign lettering.

"David Nebenzahl" wrote

I see two other problems:

1. There's an extendable oil drain tank in the service bay, but there's no room to hoist a tall old 1930's automobile up above it so's you could drain the oil; specially with the service bay door folding into the area where the car would have to go if it *would* fit... (And if you drain the oil by crawling under the car to get to the drain plug, then why on Earth would you need an upright extendable oil draining tank anyway?)
2. I once managed a string of company-owned gas stations for Atlantic-Richfield, and I'm here to tell you that the only gas station that was ever that neat and clean was one that had opened the very same day. It needs weathering and grime!

-Pete

Look for a copy of Corel Draw 11 (or maybe 9? - odd numbered releases have for some reason seemed to be more stable and bug free) and you'll get lads of fonts, and of course the vector drawing program's ability to twist and stretch and skew to your perverse little heart's content.

My reaction, exactly. It's cleaner than a movie set! Where's the grease, the dirt, the grime, smeared all over the shop, and hand dirt om the pumps, and soot on the building from smoke....

mark "grime does pay"

Maybe its because the customer who consigned the build wanted it that way...

"mark" wrote

Yup.

I was watching a guy running a freight train on the Tehachapi layout at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum*

last month, and it was quite revealing.

The layout is state-of-the-art DCC, the scenery is spectacular, and the (steam) loco in question had a full -and very effective- sound installation and was being run at absolutely prototypical speeds, the operator observing all grade crossings with the proper whistle signals, etcetera, yet the illusion was completely shattered by the fact that the loco itself -as well as the rest of the train- looked as if it had rolled out of the paint shop ten minutes before I got there.

I've been trainwatching for something like 61 years now, and so far I have yet to see my first clean freight train.

-Pete

• Follow the links and look at the pictures of the layout. It's really something!

"P. Roehling" wrote in news:48474d58$0$31729$ snipped-for-privacy@roadrunner.com:

*snip*

Keep in mind that most freight trains aren't super dirty, either. It depends on your modeling area, of course, but rail cars do get washed by the rain.

Sometimes a little dullcote is all you need...

Puckdropper

It really is a nice model, but the font selection bothered me immediately as well. Looks like arial. And to further nitpick a beautifully made model, the pumps look to be late '40's or

1950's vintage, so I'm not sure "service station" was a popular term yet. "Jack's Gas Station" or even "Jack's Auto Service" seem like better names. I won't even go into how narrow and large-diameter most of the tires are in the rack, as perhaps many of Jack's customers hadn't been able to afford a new car for a couple of decades :) But geepers- they are wrapped and even have labels on them.

It_is_ a nice model...

Dale

"Puckdropper" wrote

And sometimes one *does* see new -or freshly painted- rolling stock. But that's only "sometimes" -not "often". Most freight trains contain multiple cars that are (A) rusty, (B) dusty, (C) filthy, (D) greasy, (E) covered with graffiti, or (F) all of the above. (Cars that have been damaged in some way but that are still roadworthy aren't really unusual, either.)

And it's certainly possible to overdo the weathering bit: real freight cars come in all conditions from brand new to doddering, and over-representation of either condition detracts from authenticity.

But hey; if clean shiny freight trains are what turns your crank, then more power to you: after all, it's a hobby and they're *your* trains.

But if you're going for a illusion of reality, having more than a few clean, freshly-painted-looking cars in a freight consist simply looks wrong. You could call it the "Lionel Syndrome" and not be too far off the mark.

-Pete

I use Paint Shop Pro. I'm up to version X but still like 7 for general stuff. And, even though it works in raster graphics, it is very easy to stretch or shrink either horizontally or vertically.

I think the secret is to work in a very high dots per inch mode. I usually use 600dpi when creating decals. I'm fortunate to have a printer that will use all of those dots. It makes for very sharp small decals. Oftentimes, I'll create something in black & white. Then, I'll resize / reshape it to what I need. I'll convert the drawing to just two colors (black & white) then convert it back to a multi color image. This leaves everything in a crisp two-color graphic but you can then flood fill the letters to whatever color or colors that you need. Again, this keeps things very sharp.

If anyone is intereted in further pursuing what I'm suggesting, let me know... this thread really isn't about computer generated graphics.

dlm

Also, I would think that a real steam loco, no matter how recently washed, would, in the course of not many miles, would start showing soot, at least.

mark

"mark" wrote

And that's one reason the Southern Pacific's famed "Daylight" paint scheme featured all black roofs and kept the white, orange, and red stripes down on the sides where they wouldn't show dirt as easily.

-Pete

Wow, what a tough crowd of critics -- yet no one shared a phot of how they modeled a filling station on their layouts.

By the way, I love the fans up in the rafters.

Yes, and road dirt, too, which is why in the Good Old Days engine crew wiped down the engine as often as possible, with an oily rag, which gave a nice glossy sheen.