Success and Failure

Let's talk about the failure bit first shall we? I'd sorted out the artwork for the passenger car decals and printed them off and all came out well. Or so I thought. Went to decal one of cars and the yellow was almost transparent so was unusable. I tried printing it again but this time running them through a number of times to try and get the yellow more opaque. Again, no joy so I'm going to have to come up with Plan B. I'm going to try printing them using a colour laser printer and then spraying a coat of acrylic clear coat over the decals. If this doesn't work then I might get in contact with Steam and Things as they have a bespoke decal service and see what they can do. All of this was a bit annoying as I wanted to take some of my passenger cars to the Early Days convention next Saturday.

Enter Mike McCormac. We'd been talking about the buffers I'd used on his EHO's so I sent him over a few of the 4mm, 13" buffer heads that I had for him to have a look at. And in exchange, he sent me some decals that he'd made up for the EHO's as well as some cast screw couplers (beautiful work too). Alrighty!!! Back in business. So now, it was time to bite the bullet and get stuck into the lining. Many years ago, I purchased some Exactoscale BR Straw lining ink for use in a Rotring Lining pen. Unfortunately, the inks are no longer available but luckily, I bought 2 bottles at the time so I should have enough to last me for my needs. There's a lesson here too, don't put off that purchase of the stuff you really need as it will probably disappear before you get around to buying it. Now for the success part. I got stuck into the lining on the EHO's and the N cars and it came out pretty good, at least I think so....others may disagree. The lining, if anything, is a bit pale but I'm hoping the a touch of weathering will dull it down a bit. Here's how they turned out

 Nice Decals Mike!!

The lining looks quite pale in the photo's but isn't so bad in real life

Here they are together

And here's the FN

So, I'll finish the EHO's this week with a bit of weathering and then off to the Early Days Convention next Saturday.

I think the next project will be making some LFX's to keep the EHO's company. Now that I've got the lining sorted, I think this will be the thing to do.