Solebar Plate and Markings Decals
For Private Owner Wagons

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This page describes my current range of decals for the plates and other markings commonly found on the solebars and sides/ends of railway wagons. A wide variety of different plates and markings are available in a variety of scales. This page provides decals for wagons owned by independent operators rather than the railway companies themselves; other pages provide similar decals for railway owned wagons. A small selection of the available plates and markings is illustrated below, to whet your appetite.

Registration Plates

Rebuild Plates / Owner's Load Plate

Builder's Plates

Owner's Plates

Repairs Plates

RCH Markings

Labels and Clips

Vacuum Release and General Markings

Note: Clicking on any of the images on this page, such as those above, will cause a larger version of the image to appear in a new tab or window of your browser (depending on how your browser is set up).

The "© Aardstorm Models" watermark visible in the enlarged versions does not appear on the finished decals, it is there to discourage people from printing my decal patterns for themselves.

You will be able to put together a customised set of decals for up to 12 pairs of plates or markings for a price of £9.50. This should be sufficient for several wagons, just how many depends on how many decals each wagon uses. If you require more, you can add further pairs of decals to your set for £0.75 each. You will be able to configure the set of decals for common characteristics such as body colour, solebar colour and solebar height, and of course scale. You can also configure each pair of decals for plate colour, weathering, and replace elements of text such as numbers, dates and place names. Certain plates and markings also have additional configurable characteristics.

For each plate or marking you select and configure, you will receive a pair of decals (one for each side of the wagon) multiplied by the quantity you specify, plus at least one spare. Where a marking is direction sensitive, such as the arrow decals above, and you need a different direction on each side of the wagon, you will be have to order a pair of each direction.

If you require decals for a plate or marking that is not covered by my standard range, even when configured with alternative text etc., and you can provide an image or specification of what you require, I will be glad to add what you require to my range – please contact me with full details.

Weathering

The decals you select can individually be configured for degree of weathering/fading. Four settings are available: Pristine, Light, Medium or Heavy, as illustrated below.

The illustrations show the effects on a typical builder's plate, and another with colour in it. In general, the markings are darkened and the plate background (if any) is lightened. The background solebar colour is not changed, so that it still matches your selected paint colour.

For the Heavy setting, any colour in the plate is changed to shades of the solebar colour. This is to simulate a plate that has been painted over with the solebar colour (black in the illustration above), so is not really suitable for painted-on markings, which would disappear completely if painted over.

Configure Your Decals

To order some of my decals for plates and markings you will need to select a base type, then configure it to your required specification, select the quantity you require and add it to your set. Once you've completed your set of decals, you can then add the set to your basket.

The range of available plate and markings decals is large, so has been divided into groups of related decals, such as registration plates, builder's plates, specific types of markings, etc. Each group has its own page that you can use to select the base type you require. When you return to this page you can configure the decal you've selected with appropriate characteristics, and then add it to your set.

Certain characteristics, such as scale, body colour, solebar height and colour, apply to all of the decals in your set, and can be set below.

To keep the number of configuration option values down, while still covering the wide range of scales and retaining precision in the larger ones, the configurable dimensions are specified in scale inches, rather than model mm. A calculator and look-up table to help convert scale inches into model dimensions (or vice versa) is available here (opens in new browser tab/window).

Plate or Marking Selection

Please use the buttons below to select a base plate/marking decal and return to this page.

Railway Registration Plates:
Go To Selection Page

No plate or marking selected

Builder's Plates:
Go To Selection Page

Owner's Plates:
Go To Selection Page

Repairs Plates:
Go To Selection Page

Rebuild Plates:
Go To Selection Page

RCH Labels:
Go To Selection Page

Labels and Clips:
Go To Selection Page

Vacuum Release Markings:
Go To Selection Page

General Markings:
Go To Selection Page

Specific Plate/Marking Settings

These settings apply to the specific plate or marking decal selected above, to allow you to configure it to your requirements.

You currently have no plate or marking decal type selected. Please use the buttons above to select one.

Set Contents

Your set of decals is currently empty. Please use the controls above to select and configure one or more plate or marking decals.

General Settings

These settings apply to all decals in your set.

Warning: If you select a new plate/marking, or edit one in your existing set, after you have started to change any of the settings below, you are likely to lose those changes. Either finish selecting or editing the plates or markings first, or use this button to save your other settings before changing your set contents.

No colour selected.

Go To Selection Page

The colour of the wagon body. Private owner wagons could be painted a wide variety of colours, so a sepaprate page is used to allow you to select a corresponding paint colour, in a similar manner to the plate selection pages above. Some plates and other markings were applied to the sides or ends of the wagon body rather than its solebar, so you will be able to select this body colour as the background colour for those decals.

If the solebars of your wagons are black, and none of the plates or markings are to be fitted onto the body, then specifying a body colour is optional.

The colour of the solebar to which many of the various plates and markings were often attached, and the background colour for those decals. This was often black, particularly for wagons with steel solebars, but some owners painted the solebars the same colour as the body.

The height of the solebar to which the various plates and markings are to be attached.

Steel solebars were typically 9in high, or larger for wagons of long wheelbase or large load capacity. Such solebars usually have ribs top and bottom, creating a "C" shaped cross-section. The total thickness of these ribs should be subtracted from the overall solebar height to give the height of the flat area required here, and thus the height of the decals.

Wooden solebars were typically 12in high, but the upper part was usually obscured by the overhanging curb rail of the body. Subtract this overhang to give the height of the decals.

The scale of model(s) you are building.