Rupert's Insights: April 2021

Making Highway and Similar Signs

If you want your model railroad to capture a prototypical look it needs a lot of signs. Next time you are out walking or driving in either the city or the country, pay particular attention to the signs posted on streets, highways, parking lots, etc. In a few blocks, you will see hundreds of you take the time to look for them.

I like to make my own signs. It is very easy and inexpensive and allows you to create pretty much any sign you want, in any size.

These are the steps I follow:

Consider what signs you would like to see in your particular scene (stop, yield, slow, turns, handicap parking, PPE require, muster point, do not enter, private property, and the list goes on).
Do an internet search to determine, for standard signs, the prototype dimensions of your sign. These can be quickly found online. If in doubt, take your measuring tape with you the next time you are out.
Calculate the dimensions of your sign appropriate to the scale of your model railroad. For example, say the highway sign you are modelling is 100 centimetres (39 inches) by 60 centimetres (24 inches). If you are modelling in HO the ratio is 1:87. Simply divide the above dimensions by 87 which results in 1.15 cm (.45 inches) by 0.69 cm (0.27 inches).
Search the sign you are looking for on Google or Bing and save the image as a jpeg file.
Open your favourite word processing software. I use Microsoft Word. Create a new document then, under the insert menu at the top of the screen, select shapes and then "new drawing canvas". Adjust the "handles" on the perimeter of the drawing canvas to be large enough to accommodate all the signs you want to work with.
With the cursor clicked inside the drawing canvas, still under the insert menu at the top of the screen select "Pictures" from the ribbon and locate the jpeg file you saved in step 4.
Double click on the image. At the top right of the ribbon, you will see choices labelled "size". These include the "crop" feature as well as the horizontal and vertical measurements of the image. Type in dimensions of your desired printed sign dimensions.
You can stop here and print the one sign or repeat the process as many times as you wish to create many different signs.
Insert glossy photo quality paper into your colour printer. Print the page using "best" quality and "colour" and ensure that the correct type of paper has been selected in your printer settings.
Using spray adhesive, following the directions on the can, fasten the page to the dull side of a piece of aluminum foil large enough to cover the area behind all of the sign images. Leave this to dry overnight (it takes some time to dry because the aluminum foil doesn't "breath" and photo quality paper also has a fairly rigid surface to it). Following is an example of what the project looks like at this stage:

Roughly cut out each of the sign images with scissors.
Using a fresh single-edge razor blade carefully cut around each sign, ensuring that the cut goes cleanly through both the paper and the foil. It is good to use a self-healing mat for this and to press down on the razor blade to make the cut rather than dragging the blade across the surface.

Determine how high your sign is to be above the layout surface and cut appropriate styrene or wood pieces the desired length, allowing for room to fasten into the surface in a small hole. Standard sign heights can also be found quite readily online or again by measuring a prototypical sign and scaling the distance down to your modelling dimensions. I like to use either 4 inch X 4 inch or 6 inch X 6 inch styrene for this, depending on the sign.
Fasten the sign to the post (or directly to the side of a building, if appropriate) using appropriate adhesive. I like canopy glue for this because it sticks almost anything and has no odor. You can use cyanoacrylate but I stay away from this unless absolutely necessary because I suffer severe sneezing and extreme runny nose between 6 and 10 hours after using CA glue - usually in the middle of the night, which is most unpleasant!
If you want to make your own custom signs, follow the steps above but at the step where I say to insert a picture into the drawing canvas, insert a text box. Type your wording in the text box using your desired font. Adjust the background colour and the font colour and proceed using the same instructions as above.

Here are a few of the completed signs.

Photograph Stacking Software

Have you ever been frustrated when taking close-up photographs of your layout? Often the images in the foreground are in focus while those in the distance are not, or vice versa. It can be difficult to get everything in focus, especially indoors where the light isn't as strong as it is outdoors and where there is considerable variation in the relative distances of various objects from the camera lens.

The main issue at play is the physics of lenses and what is known as "depth-of-field". I won't get into any of the technicalities because there is a lot of information online explaining depth-of-field. I prefer to offer a solution, particularly for close-up model railroad scenery photographs.

Here is a digital photograph of a scene in which the foreground is in focus but the background is not (note that the "slow" highway sign is sharp but the flatbed trailer in the distance is out of focus):

Here is the same scene in which the background is in focus but the foreground is not (the "slow" highway sign is out of focus but the flatbed trailer is sharp).

The locomotive was stationary in both photographs.

Photograph stacking software analyses several photographs that are identical, aside from each having different areas in focus, aligns them and uses algorithms to digitally create a new photograph taking the best portions of each. The general guidelines for success are that each photograph needs to be taken from the same place (a tripod or placing the camera on a solid object works best) and the more photographs that are taken, the better so the software has lots of sharp areas to choose from.

There are several such software products on the market. I have been using Zerene Stacker. It cost me just over C$100 for the personal use version. You can download a free 30-day trial to try it out before buying.

As a test, I used my Samsung Galaxy S10 to take the two photographs above with the phone being held in my hands instead of being mounted on the recommended tripod. Again, as a test, I took only these two shots instead of the recommended multiple shots.

Even with only these two photographs, Zerene Stacker produced the following result which is quite good. Had I taken five or ten shots using a tripod the result would likely have been even better.

In situations where you want photographs that are in focus from front to back this software comes in handy, no matter whatever it is you are trying to capture.

Okanagan Seed & Feed - completed scene

Now that my Okanagan Seed & Feed industry is placed in front of Kamloops Lumber on the layout, here are a few still pictures and a 1 minute and 15-second video of the scene.

The powerhouse is in on the extreme left and the sawmill to the right of that. The burgundy-coloured building on the right is the office for the truck weigh scale.