For those of you who asked about drawing up your own decals, yes you , here's a little info about how I've gone about it. I won't claim that this is the only or best way to do things, it's just how I've ended up doing it
I use CorelDraw for this, although any vector graphics program would do the job. Inkscape is free, but I can't vouch for how good it is, as I've never used it. CorelDraw X4 home and student edition can be picked up for under £100 on ebay, older versions for even less (the current version is now X5).
Of the 3 examples above, the blue wagon owner panel and the Hazchem panel have been done in the same way. They are just simple shapes with text added in the appropriate font. There are several useful font resources on the net, a few of which are listed below:
Free font sites:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=114&page=1&fpp=20&text=58134
There are many others.
What the font:
http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
Is extremely useful if you have a good image of the text you want to create, as it'll tell you the closest match. It is a commercial site, so if you want one of the ones it highlights, you'll have to pay for it. Of course, there's nothing stopping you googling the name of the font in question... It has its limitations though, for example it'll only read dark text on a light background and it struggles if the letters are quite close together.
If you can't get a good image, or you're looking at something that is light on dark, you'll have to trawl the font sites looking for something similar to what you require. It's time consuming, but ultimately rewarding when you find exactly what you're looking for, or something that's near as dammit
In terms of company logos, it's a bit more restricted, but there are a couple of sites about that have vector images of corporate logos:
http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/logo/shell
http://www.seeklogo.com/search.html?q=norsk+hydro
They're mostly North American logos, but not all. For example, the Total logo I've been using has come from the seeklogo site. These are downloaded as vector graphics, so can be opened up in your program and resized as necessary.
If you can't get the logo you need, as long as you can get a decent photo to work from, you can trace the outline and then fill in as necessary. The Railfreight Petroleum symbol was done this way, and as they're standard size, in theory I could draw the Coal or Distribution symbols from it, now I've got the proportions right. It's time consuming, and a total ballache, but it is ultimately satisfying when it looks like it's supposed to I've done the Caib logos in the same way.
The other source of images for use, such as the hazard diamond on the Hazchem panel, is Google images. They won't be the best quality, but if you're scaling them down to fit on a 4mm scale wagon, then no-one will notice!
I try to scale from photographs if dimensions aren't known. Something like the Hazchem panel is straightforward, I know that they're 700x400mm (even if you didn't know, you can look it up quite easily). Other items can then be referenced to known dimensions from photographs. Failing that, if you're not sure, print them out on paper, stick them to the model with blu-tack and see how it compares with the photos.
One thing to watch, if you're going to end up transferring the images between different programs is their interpretation of colour. For instance, in the image above, the Marcroft Engineering panel is too turquoise, but looks fine in CorelDraw and when printed from it.
Of course, you'll spend all this time doing these little panels for your wagons, with all of the correct text and, once printed, you'll hardly be able to read any of it
For those of you who've got this far without falling asleep, well done! I hope it's been of some use/interest.
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