come good, yet again. Not often do I have recourse to dealing over the Great Water, unless, of course, it’s transfers or decals I have to find in a hurry.
Back then, before he left us a couple of years back, it was the irreplaceable Stan Cedarleaf, Master of Decalcomania in Arizona, and his incredible service, almost by return of post, excusing the delay by the usual US Mail ‘service’. More commonly known as a delivery delaying service.
After royally screwing up a set of VERY expensive waterslide decals from my usual UK source of things decal-ish - Welsh stuff from Endon Valley Custom Decals - I thought I’d give Del Tapporo of G-Scale Graphics a call, on the off-chance that he wasn’t laden down with work. Tom Eivers [Endon Valley Custom Decals] had made me a beautiful set of names for my converted Bachmann 2-8-0 - you may recall that mentioned a project a while back as contender for an unbuilt but plausible loco for the Brecon Mountain Railway down near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.
Unfortunately, I mis-set the edge trimmer when cutting them out and cut both of them about half a mil too thin. No mistaking it - it was awful and I felt really stupid. Bear in mind though that the lettering is white, and so was the backing… Panic set in, hence my recourse to Mr Tapporo.
So I used his site email to contact him.
TWO hours later he resploned with an outline for me to tweak, if necessary.
I twoke, minutely, altering the height by 1mm.
‘I’ll get on with it within the next five days’ - he said.
And he must have done, because ten days later they plep through my letter box.
Wojja think?
A word - they are actually extremely thin vinyl of astonishing opacity and stretchihoodshipness, and can, with care and the end of a pencil or blunted toothpick, be coerced into laying down in grooves or, as here, on a couple of lines of rivets. As I can attest from prior experience, ten years of application makes no odds - they still look as good as new on my other projects.
So, a big hand to Mr Tapporo and his company of G-Scale Graphics [gurgle for details].
Now, the sharp-eyed among you will have noticed something slightly different about the ends of the loco. Because they have no means of turning the loco or caboose, they have to run backwards from Torpantau - the Northern Terminus, back to the depot at Pant. Being a rural line, there is wildlife to hit with the train, so a cow-catcher is needed on the tender as well as the loco - AFAIK, unique for a loco with a tender in UK.
Good pal RhinoChugger here in UK was kind enough to send me a scrapped loco front end to bodge into use on the tender - the results you see above. I also converted both ends to Accucraft couplings with round faces - not too different from the real thing, and added hoses, gladhands and and valves to suit. Using the five foot rule, I reckon they are passable, so a VERY big thanks to Mr RhinoChugger!
Now, all I have to do is to build a 1/20.3 caboose - again. And a couple of 1/20.3 box cars, again, again. And hope to find some brave soul who can whittle me a few passenger car kits. I’ll be talking to the those I know at the Llanfair show at the end of the month.