Blue & grey mk1 super detail coaches

Since gaining a few more super detail coaches recently, I decided to revisit the overlays and have a go at making some blue & grey mk1 coaches. The first EMU project was completed over two years ago and still looks great - no peeling of the transfers, which is quite a common problem, especially with paper based overlays, hence these are vinyl based.

The thinking was that having done the blue & grey EMU project, creating mk1 coaches would be pretty easy & straightforward... it wasn't!

The only thing usable from the original EMU project was the blue & grey backgrounds, everything else had to be recreated.

With the EMUs, the window configuration is totally different. This time I need to produce vinyls that need to be cut in much finer detail, especially the individual panels within the window design of the mk1 coach. These would have to be drawn electronically.

So we start off by taking a scan of a mk1 coach body so that I have something to work with. And we end up with this:

Now I'm going to have to replicate this design electronically, so the easiest way was to effectively trace over the top of the existing image. No fancy graphics packages here, this is all done using the basic shapes found within MS Publisher.

So now we have everything traced. For the printing process we only need the door & hinge lines and coach numbers, all the windows will be cut, but we need to setup the Silhouette machine to cut in the right places, hence we need accurate outlines of all the windows.

When separated from the original source image, we end up with a tracing that looks like this:

So we now need to create the cutting diagram, so we end up with this: 

But we also need this version for the final print:

Now the fiddly stuff. To take a tracing of the windows at this scale would produce cuts that are unsatisfactory, so I start off with large versions of each type of window, create the cut template and then insert individually along each of the coach sides.

A time consuming process, by this stage all the windows have been positioned and the overall image sized to the dimensions of the coach body. Then we're ready to print & cut.

 The graphics for the other coaches are produced in exactly the same way, here the 1st & 2nd class coach is printed and cut:

 The vinyls peel off the sheet, leaving the internal windows behind!

These are then lined up over the original coach and smoothed into place. 

Once the position is correct, the whole thing is coated in lacquer to seal and protect the printed image.

The original coach roof looks too light.

So these were painted in a darker shade of grey.

And the final results:

1st & 2nd:

Brake van: 

Open 2nd class saloon:

With all the window templates filed, I can now produce further blue & grey coaches for the layout.