Final cut of the corporate identity

Well after lots of effort and jiggery pokery, I finally have all of my freight cars branded as, I think, they should be. I went for SNRD as a reporting mark for the reefers and I have also re branded the hopper cars. I have to have a small extra go at renumbering the hopper cars as they all have the same number. I did the reefer changes using the white decal sheet with the red printed on it. I did the hopper car finishing touches by using the white sheet but putting the white SNE lettering on the left hand end onto a black square. Once they were matt varnished, the black outline didn't show.

Here is the whole train - it looks very good to my eyes and is good enough for me.

These are the hopper cars - these started out as PRR hoppers with the PRR logo, PRR reporting mark on the left and an orange ball in the top left hand corner. This is how they started out:

and this is how they look now:

and finally, the reefers:

If you really want to see them, warts and all, then double click on any image for a larger version.

Hope you like them because I do.

Reefers get the corporate treatment

In our supposed Sunset North eastern, one of the main industries is a meat processors called 'Easter Meat Packers'. This is a railroad owned company so should be in some sort of alignment with corporate branding!. I did look up EMPX but that was taken along wth EMPY so I have gone for the EMPZ reporting mark.

These two are decalled up using the laser printed decal sheet. Didn't need the white underlay on these! The red came through really well.

Don't forget that this in N Scale so this is all tiny stuff!

My newly painted roster

Well, here we are - The Sunset North Eastern roster in all its glory!

Getting the decals right.

I did place the red laser printed decals on the locos and cabooses but, as I was warned by Bill Brillinger, the grey showed through. So, I took his advice and had him rustle up some white ALPS printed decals to pace under a second set of red ones. This should solve the problem.

I am in the process of doing this and have all of the existing red decals overlayed with the new white ones.

Here is a photo.

This evening, I shall start placing the replacement red ones over the top.

I shall post the pics when I have some.

Later the same day......

Having tried putting the laser printed red decals over the white, it was generally agreed by the management - i.e. my wife, that the locos and cabooses looked better with the white logo. Off came the red and on went the matt varnish to seal everything in.

So we have now finalised the Sunset North Eastern look and feel. Grey bodies, red ends and white lettering. Looks good to me!

Decals are all ready to go

I finally decided on the branding that I liked. You will see later in the post where I am going with this.

I have finished painting all of the locos and the cabooses (cabeese?).

Here is a shot of the four locos and two cabooses. They have all been coated with Johnson's Klear in preparation of adding the decals.

I went down to my daughter's school this afternoon. She has a very nice colour laser printer/photocopier there. I printed out an Adobe Illustrator page that I made yesterday. This was printed onto a sheet of clear laser decal paper.

Click on this for a larger image. This page contains loads of copies of decals that I need for the branding of Sunset North eastern (note I have dropped the 'and' from the name).

There are decals here for the GP and RS locos, some black logos for the RDC and lots of stuff for branding freight cars and cabooses. Lastly, there are some branding logos for reefers used by the 'Eastern Meat Packers' which is an SNE owned business. I have created a reporting mark EMPZ for this as EPMX and EPMY seem to be taken! On the sheet are lots of serial codes for freight cars and some weight lading details. These are all the same but I will use them on different cars on the basis that the lettering is so small that it won't show.

I am going to start applying the decals tomorrow afternoon so expect to see another post later tomorrow

Planning for Industries

Whilst we all ponder the corporate identity, I have had to move on with other things. Actually, I still have to get hold of the laser decal sheets I need so I can't go forward on the loco front for now, anyway.

I am in the process of planning for the industries that are to be in the town. This has two aspects.

1. Analyse the freight cars that I have to see if
     a) I have the right mix of cars and
     b) that I have some industries for them all to serve.
2. Start planning where the industries will go and what they will look like.

1. Freight Car analysis. As if by chance, this month's Model Railroader - October 2012 has an article about a 1960s freight car roster. In that the author lists  then breakdown of car types and their volumes owned by railroads at the time. I have used this to look at my car mix and came up with the following spreadsheet results:

Total Owned	% of Total	Type	Actual Total	% of Actual Total	Should Have	Difference	Needed
1	2.70%	Covered Hopper	120,000.00	6.27%	2.3	1.3	2.0
0	0.00%	Caboose		0.00%	0.0	0.0	0.0
2	5.41%	Tank Car non- fuel	153,608.00	8.03%	3.0	1.0	1.0
5	13.51%	Reefer	122,000.00	6.38%	2.4	-2.6	0.0
4	10.81%	Gondola	240,000.00	12.55%	4.6	0.6	1.0
10	27.03%	Hopper	436,000.00	22.80%	8.4	-1.6	0.0
15	40.54%	Box Car	706,000.00	36.91%	13.7	-1.3	0.0
0	0.00%	Flat Car	111,000.00	5.80%	2.1	2.1	3.0
0	0.00%	Stock Car	24,018.00	1.26%	0.5	0.5	1.0
37			1,912,626.00				8

This analysis showed that I need another 8 cars to keep the ratios right. I have too many Reefers so I have ignored that one.

I then went through and created a list of all the types of industry that could source or sink loads from these types of cars and used that to construct a list of industries that will be in place at Ellerby.

2. Having decided on a finite - but not final - list of industries, I then proceeded to work out what sort of footprint these industries might have. The idea is that, although it may take me many months to build all of the required structures, I can start of with just place holders. Initially, that will enable me to run the trains and see that I have got it somewhat right.

Here is what the railroad looks like at the moment.

Just for good order's sake, the track in the bottom picture to the right of the structure is currently curved but will be straightened to align with the deck of the freight house.

Corporate Identity

Given that I have acquired my locos without reference to the road names, I now have 4 locos plus a Budd RDC all with different road names. This doesn't matter because I was never going to get any for the Sunset and North Eastern, given that I made up that name in 1970!

My loco roster now stands at the following:
Atlas GP-15 - Union Pacific
Atlas GP-15 - CSX
Atlas GP-9 - Northern Pacific
Bachmann RD-3 - D&RGW
Kato Budd RDC3 - Rock Island

I spent the last weekend stripping down the two GP-15s to their constituent parts, primed them and airbrushed them into S&NE Corporate colours for the mid-70s. I had previously, done a similar job on an Atlas Caboose. I intend to do the GP-9 and the RS-3 in similar colours but the Budd will stay in overall aluminium - I will just change the name down the side. So here is the results on the GP-15s and the caboose. I have yet to put the road names and numbers on them. My daughter has a colour laser printer at her work so I will cadge the use of that to print some decals.

I have mocked some of the ideas that I have for the road name style. Comments would be appreciated.