Well, they should have....80 years ago or so. Then I wouldn't have had to worry about the Royal Cypher on the side of my BKD prison Van!! This was a right royal pain in the @#$%. And while we're at it, why couldn't King George V make it to the end of the 1930's instead of dropping off this mortal coil in 1936? What this meant was I had to make a choice between King George V or VI so I could choose which cypher to use as the BKD prison vans had the reigning Monarch's cypher on their sides. I chose KGV as he gave me the greatest time frame as he reigned from 1910 - 1936 which also fitted in with my Loopline time frame of 1919, just before it was bypassed.
Just before we talk more on the cypher, I finally worked out the problems with the decals out as the yellow was coming out almost transparent. What I did was print of the yellow as white first and then follow up with the yellow which solved the problem.
Anyway, back to the cypher, I trawled the net looking for something suitable but couldn't find much at all except for lots of photos of post boxes, First World War Medals and postage stamps. Eventually I found a graphic but it wasn't that sharp and when I printed it with white first, the whole graphic printed out as a white box which of course was totally useless. More trawling of the net until I found another, much sharper graphic. This time while sharpening the graphic and replacing the black with yellow under high magnification, I noticed that there was a very light grey pixilation across the whole graphic. Could this be what was causing the printer to print solid white? I removed that, printed the cypher on white, then yellow and bingo, it worked! The only thing is I don't know if it is the same cypher that was painted on BKD's in the '30's as I've never seen a photo of one from that time period. Oh well, I reckon no one else has either so who's going to argue? Here's how it looks
Just before we talk more on the cypher, I finally worked out the problems with the decals out as the yellow was coming out almost transparent. What I did was print of the yellow as white first and then follow up with the yellow which solved the problem.
Anyway, back to the cypher, I trawled the net looking for something suitable but couldn't find much at all except for lots of photos of post boxes, First World War Medals and postage stamps. Eventually I found a graphic but it wasn't that sharp and when I printed it with white first, the whole graphic printed out as a white box which of course was totally useless. More trawling of the net until I found another, much sharper graphic. This time while sharpening the graphic and replacing the black with yellow under high magnification, I noticed that there was a very light grey pixilation across the whole graphic. Could this be what was causing the printer to print solid white? I removed that, printed the cypher on white, then yellow and bingo, it worked! The only thing is I don't know if it is the same cypher that was painted on BKD's in the '30's as I've never seen a photo of one from that time period. Oh well, I reckon no one else has either so who's going to argue? Here's how it looks
On her Majesty's Service
Also decaled the GT, BKG's and KKG as well as the KB
Just some weathering to go
I also managed to do some more work on the NIB set with some touching up of the paint as well as building the working diaphragms and making the footsteps for the ends of the HFN's. Next will be add the diaphragms and deacalling the NIB set fallowed by weathering for all the carriages. But this won't be for another couple of weeks as this week at the salt mine isn't looking good and then the following week, I'll be on holidays with the family up in sunny Cairns.
Cheers until then
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