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Painted or Wrapped Trains in Special Liveries


Krackel Hopper

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Another painted train just entered the market!

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10331103

Meitetsu Series 3300 [Project of the 400th Anniversary of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu`s Achievement] Wrapping Train 4-Car Set (w/Motor)

 

This looks very nice! But seriously OUCH on that price tag... And how well is Platz with their motors by the way?

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Platz dont have motors.  You use either tomytec or greenmax depending on the train they release.

 

This set comes with motor, so guessing it's made by Tomix?

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Nice art, but ouch on the price! I guess buying the greenmax train OEM and then painting it's tough to do it inexpensively!

 

Looks like direct inkjet printing maybe. Really is the future and great pearling with 3d printing. Been seeing interesting ways folks are doing this. Luckily the train car side is pretty flat. I wonder how most of the temp prototype painted trains in japan are done, decal or the big inkjet printers. It was amazing watching them print some 25' x 15' fabric banners. They rolled the fabric out in a big room and set up the printer on top of it! Then bango 4 hrs later the print!

 

This is going to be a hard one... I've limited my train buying a lot in the last year or two to just special stuff and this may unfortunately be special enough!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

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Ahah ~ That answers. Both ouch Green Max... No steel conductor plate and has to be bought separately again... Seriously, the train looks good enough to buy but the price and lack of the 'standard' items is really pushing me away...

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Also, the Kiha125 Romancing Saga is finally out!

 

10326581a3.jpg 

 

10326581a7.jpg 

 

Photos from HS

 

 

Seeing this in picture certainly made me think again for this train!  :)

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Mine is in a combined monthly order.  Probably wont see it until the 3rd week of October.

 

Only problem I see with this set is the couplers between the 2 cars.  IF it is anything like the Kiha 125 I own.  You need the end skirts and hoods attached to prevent the shell from dropping down onto the bogies.

 

But adding rapido couplers means doing away with the skirts.  Or spending even more yen (on a 6000 yen non lighting train) on fitting tight lock couplers and keeping the skirts.

Edited by katoftw
  • Like 1
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I see.. Indeed these Tomytec trains do add up quite a fair bit motorising and customising them... But at least you're spared of the pantographs on this train...

 

But was there a ready made to run, with head and tail lights version for the Kiha-125?

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Just marking this question here...

 

We all know about wrapping trains... I was thinking, is it very difficult to actually print out and paste on existing trains wrapping advertisements? I saw on Yahoo Auctions some customised decals like these:

 

rokuiti2-img600x400-1424002488kb6jxl4502

 

Which seems to be for this:

 

 

Which looks really cool...

 

Question is, will these decals be easy to duplicate, such as getting the design out and printing it out and applying them by ourselves? I certainly want some customised decals like these on my trains but wouldn't want to be paying those amounts for them...

 

Here's more:

 

rokuiti2-img600x400-1386863530dzgguc8402

 

Arigato decal that transforms your normal E3 Komachi to a really rare Arigato version...

 

rokuiti2-img600x400-1408280370lyk9pr3028

 

Similar, but for the 300 series...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jr,

 

They can be done quite nicely.

 

I did some tiny Tama transfers with my color laser printer. At 600 dpi they came out nicely at like 3-5mm size. I used the transfer system that lifts off the toner and attaches it to a sticky back that you can then rub off onto the car. Only rub us you need to cut closely around the edges. The sticky around the edges could collect smutz eventually but a coat of dull coat helps that.

 

Water slide work well in the inkjet printer as well. We have done the jrm containers with them and got detail down to tiny serial numbers easily. Again dulcoat helps after applying is good.

 

Tough thing is doing white with any of these. Printers don't print white (except for specialized printers like an alps wax printers or silk screened decals) so you either have to have white on the object behind the decal in clear areas of the decal or on white decal film, but then you need to trim exactly around the outside of the decal. Easy if going on a white space!

 

Applying over a larger more complex surface can be tricky. Luckily most car sides are pretty uniform,mbut still getting a larger decal like this all aligned and not tearing it while applying can be tricky and takes some practice! Get a few pages of inkjet decal paper and make some practice test decals and apply on a junk car for practice.

 

Jeff

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There's a company named Electra Railway Graphics who make similar things for UK-outline models.

 

They were helped enormously by the fact that the old pre-Bachmann Graham Farish used clear plastic for coach bodies (then tampo printed everything), so a few minutes with Brasso and you had a bare shell with nothing to interfere with the new windows. I've used a couple of their kits and had reasonable results, although they're not up to the usual JDM standards. One is a "Network South East" MK2 (refurbishing a scruffy old Farish coach which had had that livery originally, but hadn't weathered the intervening 25 years well) and the other a conversion of a MK1 coach into a vehicle used for pantograph testing, which I still haven't finished (need to complete the pantograph well, paint the roof, and add all the gribbly bits like insulators and cable runs along with a pantograph).

 

A while ago they switched to having the vinyl overlays professionally printed, so I'd imagine the quality has improved further since I last used any. They also offer overlays for the more conventionally assembled models which have replaced the one-piece clear shells.

 

In short, if you can find someone with a vinyl cutter who's game to have a go then you might find it very easy to make these. The hardest part seems to be that you end up with white edges around the vinyl - as you can't print white they usually use a white base sheet and print the other colours on top. In the case of my test coach it shouldn't be too obvious, as the roof conversion, new gangway end plates, yellow ends and upgraded underframe should stand out more than the fact that the sides have white edges.

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I've seen those adds for the British vinyl decals, I don't think anyone here in the states is doing that! But we have few wrapped trains like that! With the vinyl cutter would be great to take out the window. Bits! Vinyl can be a bit more forgiving that thin decal membrane!

 

How about running a marker of a similar color along the edge before applying? I've done this with good success also the edge of white cardstock in printed cardstock buildings (but it's stiff to deal with!)

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

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Well, I did another approach on this job.

 

1. Take front, back, left, and right pictures of the real train.

2. "straighten" the picture

3. Put it in a train papercraft template (coaches here are very similar.. So I just need 1 template for all kind of coaches. Just differ in roof, doors, and windows, and those are included in the pic)

4. Print it out in photo paper

5. Assemble it like a papercraft

6. Attach it into a suitable chassis

 

Done!

 

For the windows, I cut a hole and then slap a clear plastic sheet from the inside.

 

To make the body stronger, I used some BBQ wooden sticks as the "bone". Placed horizontally between the side and roof section, also on the bottom side section.

 

Here is one of the finished coach:

 

post-2495-0-25285400-1446812920_thumb.jpg

Edited by HantuBlauLOL
  • Like 2
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Hey that's quite a nice job done! Thanks for sharing!

 

I don't know if I can make it as I suck at printing and such... I think I might just go with one of the decals above, probably the one for the Kiha-187, as it looks really cute and the original painting is kinda boring... Will update this again once I receive it (compliments to free service fee and shipping fee for Yahoo Auctions now) and try to fix it onto my Kiha-187...

 

I mean, look the actual train is so cute!

 

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Done!

 

For the windows, I cut a hole and then slap a clear plastic sheet from the inside.

 

Very good result! It's an idea I've been playing around with myself as well, but you put it to practice! How did you do the window partitions? Were these cut out as well, or added later?

 

I assume you can get amazing results combining your techniques with a cutter plotter (e.g. Silhouette Cameo). Especially when it comes to tedious tasks like cutting out the windows.

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Just cut it with a standard cutter.. If you messed it up, just align it again and drop a CA from the inside, works like a charm.

 

Ah wait, I almost forget. To add more strength, drop CA accross the inner side of the body evenly after you cut the window holes and assembled it, but before attaching the clear plastic. In HVS papers, CA coating also made it waterproof.

 

I just discovered it some days ago.

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I've seen those adds for the British vinyl decals, I don't think anyone here in the states is doing that! But we have few wrapped trains like that! With the vinyl cutter would be great to take out the window. Bits! Vinyl can be a bit more forgiving that thin decal membrane!

 

How about running a marker of a similar color along the edge before applying? I've done this with good success also the edge of white cardstock in printed cardstock buildings (but it's stiff to deal with!)

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

The problem is avoiding the marker pen ending up on the sides as well as the edges. Card has a bit more rigidity to it than vinyl!

 

Electra's early stuff had solid windows (printed with a black-and grey pattern which looked like white noise), later on they started to cut the windows out. Mine have cut-out windows to reveal the clear plastic sides underneath.

 

It's fairly forgiving, I wouldn't like to try to peel it off and reattach as it'd probably stretch, but I was able to get the vinyl on straight and without bubbles. The hardest bits are the thin strips representing the glazing bars, as they look terrible if not straight.

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That's it?? The thread stops here? No more 'painted train alerts'? I just read through five years of this thread, all the time eagerly anticipating the recent posts, to see what's currently on the market.

 

 

Seriously, how to find out when these things are released? Scour Hobbysearch daily?

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