I bought a Swiss re 460 on E-Bay Germany with the 'CATS Musical' livery ..
with decals applied ..
Upon close inspection, it appeared to have been done with one of the manufactures printing machines..it was so good… [Maybe HAG?]
Upon making some inquiries, I found out who had done it [in Germany].
I contacted this person and he gave me some information on how to do the decals ..
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I purchased some decal A4 13 micron paper from www.drucker-onkel.de .
Why buy from Germany?
Out of all the UK suppliers I contacted, non could confirm the thickness of their paper ..
And the 13 micron paper applies better than lesser thicknesses ..
The decal paper was for laser printing ... which I had done in a local shop ..
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I did some time back purchase some ink jet decals, which I printed myself ..
But one needs to apply some clear lacquer on the paper, to stop the water based inks from running when putting in water ... but this degrades the decal application.
I also tried some self-adhesive sticky transparent vinyl paper [for inkjet printing] .. but this was too thick, and just covered the side ribbing on the loco… .not going into the groove's ..
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All the art work was done in Corel Draw ...
Some of the more complicated designs… .I found photographs of the original loco and traced over it with Corel ..
The pictures are my first attempt… .some problems with the decals stretching when applied, but not every time .... It takes a bit of practice ..
The only drawback is that ink-jet and most laser printers do no print white ..
So the loco has to be air brushed white first..so that any white graphics show up as white ..