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Railtec Transfers


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8 minutes ago, truffy said:

 

Hi Steve, your custom text page states:

 

 

You give "BR font" as an example, above. But what are the 'standard' typefaces, such that GWR is excluded? My interest is in SR.

 

Standard typefaces will be those that are readily available either online or on your own computer. For example, if you open up Microsoft Word or similar application there will be a myriad of pre-installed typefaces. Many of the Big Four markings were hand painted and there were multiple variations in the style of "G W R" and "S R" if I recall (I wasn't around at the time, but from researching books etc). As soon as you get into the realms of hand painted items then it's a completely different ball game, as that vector artwork has to be manually recreated, and before you get to that point you need to be able to resource sufficiently detailed photos. By the time you know where you are you've already invested a couple of hours of specialist design labour for something that you'd probably end up selling for comparitively peanuts and that's before you get to the point where you can cycle through the test / print / re-test / re-print iterations. With "standard" readily available typefaces, everyone is on the same page and agreed on exactly what the typeface should look like. Like I say, if I have something very specific then it exponentially increases the chances that I'll be able to make some resource to help (although there are only so many hours in each week and it's unfortunately impossible of course to be able to help absolutely everybody).

Edited by railtec-models
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hi Steve, I am looking to get a set of transfers to make up the British Telecom Class 118 DMU in the mids 80's, do you have the artwork to do it in 7mm ?

 

Best regards

Craig.

 

picture off the internet for enquiry purposes

 

 

 

Class 118 telecom.jpg

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17 minutes ago, muddys-blues said:

hi Steve, I am looking to get a set of transfers to make up the British Telecom Class 118 DMU in the mids 80's, do you have the artwork to do it in 7mm ?

 

Best regards

Craig.

 

picture off the internet for enquiry purposes

 

 

 

Class 118 telecom.jpg

 

I'd LOVE to be able to do this, and I have dozens of photos like this one, but none of them are anywhere near close enough to be able to create all that intricate artwork. It's an absolute mammoth beast. Obviously this isn't the kind of thing that can be recreated by hand from scratch - it would take literally weeks/months of specialist design labour. If someone back in the day went down the full length of the DMU and took a hi-res perfectly square-on photo every couple of metres, or has the artwork so I can work the transfer magic, then get in touch.

Edited by railtec-models
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Hi Steve,

 

I’m wondering if you may now have the resources to make me some First Capital Connect logos and blurred cityscapes in 4mm? I contacted you about this last year and you said back then you were too busy but I have all the artwork ready to go.

 

Cheers

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19 minutes ago, bart2day said:

Hi Steve,

 

I’m wondering if you may now have the resources to make me some First Capital Connect logos and blurred cityscapes in 4mm? I contacted you about this last year and you said back then you were too busy but I have all the artwork ready to go.

 

Cheers

 

Is that actual vector artwork (i.e. so something like an AI, EPS, SVG file), or just JPG photograhs? What many people understandably may not realise is that there is a very large difference between the two, and in order to make decent transfers on decent kit then it really would need to be _artwork_ rather than JPG photographs (and that's even before you get to the juncture of going through multiple cylces of plot-print-tweak particularly to get complex designs looking right).

Edited by railtec-models
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20 minutes ago, railtec-models said:

 

Is that actual vector artwork (i.e. so something like an AI, EPS, SVG file), or just JPG photograhs? What many people understandably may not realise is that there is a very large difference between the two, and in order to make decent transfers on decent kit then it really would need to be _artwork_ rather than JPG photographs (and that's even before you get to the juncture of going through multiple cylces of plot-print-tweak particularly to get complex designs looking right).

 

Thanks for your reply Steve. You are right, I was not aware of this. Nonetheless I do have both the images in SVG format (I converted them a while back for my own editing) if that helps?

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1 hour ago, railtec-models said:

Standard typefaces will be those that are readily available either online or on your own computer. 

 

Thanks. According to HMRS, SR used something akin to Gill Sans for station signs. Gill Sans is readily available on my Mac. If it's not readily available on your computer, I could send the artwork in vector format.

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34 minutes ago, truffy said:

 

Thanks. According to HMRS, SR used something akin to Gill Sans for station signs. Gill Sans is readily available on my Mac. If it's not readily available on your computer, I could send the artwork in vector format.

 

I have Gill Sans no problem (and sub-variants of it), so if somebody wished to leverage that customisable alpha-numeric item mentioned earlier then Gill Sans would certainly qualify. Regular GS is comparably quite a thin typeface to others though, and I'd be surprised if it were a good representation of station names (if it's anything like GWR at least), so it'd be a case of the modeller specifying which absolute variant of a typeface best suited their needs, e.g. Gill Sans, Gill Sans Bold, Gill Sans Ultra Bold etc. If somebody did have artwork in vector format though then it opens up wider possibility. The only thing I can't print is time. Or a cure.

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2 hours ago, railtec-models said:

 

I'd LOVE to be able to do this, and I have dozens of photos like this one, but none of them are anywhere near close enough to be able to create all that intricate artwork. It's an absolute mammoth beast. Obviously this isn't the kind of thing that can be recreated by hand from scratch - it would take literally weeks/months of specialist design labour. If someone back in the day went down the full length of the DMU and took a hi-res perfectly square-on photo every couple of metres, or has the artwork so I can work the transfer magic, then get in touch.

 

Does anyone know if Dave Roome is on RMweb ?

 

TIA

Craig.

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14 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

He used to be...…………………….

 

Ok thanks, does anybody have contact with him ? I know he had some artwork that covered the two power cars in black & white.

 

Best regards

Craig.

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4 minutes ago, GTi said:

Hi Steve

 

How can I contact you? 

 

Your contact page says it is being upgraded.

 

GTi

 

On 21/04/2020 at 13:01, railtec-models said:

Until I've made time to re-code the contact form on the web site, just IM me here.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Any thoughts on how to get hold of Steve? I'm trying to order something not available from the options on the website but I don't think the request is reinventing the wheel! (Although who am I to know.)

 

I tried the online contact us page on the website - same response as others - so emailed the info@ email address back in mid April. I saw suggestions to IM him on here which I did a week ago but still nothing.

Thought I'd ask as he is usually very prompt and the social media seems to suggest Railtec are clearly very active!

 

Al

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18 minutes ago, railtec-models said:

 

Hi Al, I need to catch up on RMWeb IMs but do bear with me. I do get to them eventually - sometimes quicker than others. Unfortunately there's only limited resource (me) and despite the continued utterly crazy hours it's just a physical impossibility to be able to respond to everything as quickly as I'd like and still maintain quality of product. This is impacted by an eye watering number of emails, txt msgs, Whatsapp msgs, phone calls, forum tags, forum IMs, FB tags, FB IMs, Instagram tags, Instagram IMs which come in literally 24/7/365 - and that's in addition to dispatching a significant recent increase in web orders, replenishing stock, trying to develop new line items, multiple iterations of testing (which for some items can literally take days) and, somewhere in amongst all of that, trying to remember to spend time with the wife and kid. I empathise in this day and age there's a strong expectation to have fast responses in addition to all the other business processes, but the simple reality is that Railtec, like many of the niche ventures that support the hobby, are surprisingly finely balanced and just don't have Amazon-esque resources to be able to be everywhere at once. And that absolutely isn't intended as any kind of dig as I know you were just asking a simple unloaded question, but hopefully it offers a real world view of the challenges faced when one guy creates a beast which ploughs 400+ new products into the community every year and toils day in day out to support as many requests as possible - unfortunately there will inevitably be some gaps. But hopefully the wait is generally worth it :)

 

Not a problem! Thank you for the response, I can well imagine demand has spiked exponentially and I really do appreciate what you bring to the hobby!

 

Al

 

 

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Guest Half-full

Hi Steve

 

Just a quick q to see if you plan to do the Northern Spot pack for Class 155's as per the 5294 156 pack?

 

Asking on here as the email function is being worked on as per your webpage.

 

Just trying to plan in a couple of projects!

 

TIA

 

HF

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