On many railways, locomotives sport headboards for special events and occasions, and for today's blog post, here are some photos of new ones I wanted to try for my customs.
I always thought it'd be really nice for engines on the Island of Sodor to have headboard designs for special moments in their stories, and there are many possibles, like for their narrow gauge trains! For the Skarloey Railway, I came up with some ideas to practice making prototypical and freelance designs.
Each one is designed in Adobe Illustrator, and printed on premium matte paper. After cutting the excess with a model knife and scissors, I use a marker that matches the edge of the board, adding color to the white paper color, and then glue them to thick black card. I have an extra strip bent to fit the lamp iron and glue, which allows me to fix on the headboard snugly in place.
Duncan sure feels proud to wear this head board! It's based on many of his fellow Andrew Barclay well tanks and his Orenstein & Koppel cousins from Britain and around the world wear. It's a simple one with a black fill and yellow text, which compliments the number boards I added to the steam locomotives on this railway.
Some of these headboards have fanciful designs that I was inspired to come up with. This one displays a local mountain forestry further inland, with a dark green base color and text in yellow and orange.
This board displays the wharf at the bottom of the line, with a blue base, cream text, and orange boarders, some of my favorite colors.
Rheneas is at the quarry with Cora. His driver and fireman are getting him ready to go back to the waterfront with a loaded slate train to be loaded on a mainland trawler.
On their journeys, the engines can use these headboards to bring awareness to the public their railway, a local business or industry, or any event. Here Skarloey hauls a slate train through the open countryside, proudly sporting one of his railway's headboards.
For this one, Rheneas is about to start his day with the morning passenger train, and this board displays one dedicated to the train of it's name. He also has the Skarloey Railway badge on a crest mounted above his buffers. He feels quite elaborate for the occasion, starting the summer season!
This was a fun project. I would like to try some more prototypical colors, and even make some in HO/OO scale.
Until next time!
awesome
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