Requests for help with bespoke work

If you are waiting for custom work, or thinking about asking for a project to be considered, then please take a moment to read this. I gladly help where I can, but there are some constraints.

Railtec is driven by one guy; that's my dubious mug on the right. I began making transfers for personal use many years ago and opened things up to others where there is resource to do so.

The demand for Railtec product is colossal - and growing, and that's flattering, but there is a flip side. Those who have seen the Railtec stand at Warley on a Saturday will have a good visual representation of the impossibility of trying to be everything to everybody, despite working every available moment in an attempt to help as many people as physically possible.

So, there have to be guidelines and understanding:

1. Firstly, and most importantly, please remember:

1. Please be polite and courteous. For the overwhelrming majority who are, it's appreciated and I'm more likely to consider putting in that extra hour on a Sunday evening to help.

2. Please keep in mind that Railtec is driven by one guy, so inevitably it will never achieve the 24/7 follow-the-sun chat agent model of Amazon Prime or Argos. This is a hugely niche service and product with limited specialist resource for custom projects.

3. Everything Railtec is self-taught: and I'm still learning. It is the combined application of art, science, specialist subject knowledge, dogged determination to work through tedious cycles of R&D and bending industrial equipment to do things it wasn't designed to do. It's why there are so few people who do it, and even fewer with the proper kit. But it does take time to carefully work through each stage in the process.

4. Please keep in mind that the hobby is supported by a large number of similarly small "companies", primarily set up by hobbiests, risking huge sums of personal cash, investing time way beyond a normal working week and developing specialist resource for the greater good (and hopefully be able to make a living). It can sometimes be easy to expect these "companies" (large or small) to make XYZ for us just because we might want something and because we claim "they'd sell like hot cakes". Anything that gets made for us by others is a bonus.

5. When we are eager to complete a project it can be tempting to ask about progress. But, if every "how are you getting on with" email, instant message, text message, forum tag etc were responded to, then there would be no time to offer to help with custom projects. If you have asked me to consider designing a new stock item and I have agreed to consider it, it will be ready once it's on the web site. If it's not on the web site then it's not ready.

2. "Great that you could get made what you wanted, but..."
From time to time, people feel so delighted with the product and service that they have received that they are kind enough to make appreciative posts on forums - and that's wonderful. It encourages me to continue helping as many people as I possibly can, which supports the hobby and helps it grow further. It's a genuine pleasure to help the overwhelming majority who appreciate it. This does however appear to sometimes invite a vocal response from individuals intent on venting a personal displeasure, simply because there has not (yet) been resource to help them with their niche project. Please consider the impact that posting discouraging comments may have.

3. "Custom" items already on the web site
Perhaps obvious, but these are exempt. The "loco number(s) of your choice" and other similar offerings on the web site normally get dispatched within a day or two. That's because templates for these items already exist and most of the research and design has already been done - the only thing needed is to research photos of the actual loco (to get the number spacing correct), drop those into the template and then schedule for print.

4. So why do some things take so long?
In most cases, 95% of the work is the research and design of the artwork itself. Printing is often the easy part. People are more than welcome to provide vector artwork that is ready to print - even though certain tweaks may still need to be made, though the cost of approaching a good graphic design artist who happens to have an intimate knowledge of railway insignia could be expensive. (At Railtec you get both of these specialities combined with the additional 3rd specialist skill of how to manipulate industrial printers in a way to produce quality transfers).

Unless someone has very specific requirements, e.g. specific loco numbers or "8 x My Station Name in Arial typeface, black, max 20mm long", then chances are a request probably isn't straightforward and will need a lot of R&D before it gets anywhere near the printers. Also, some requests logically get grouped together so a chronological approach doesn't always follow. That's why no money or deposit is taken up-front for anything which isn't ready to ship within a few days.

5. I see you do XYZ in another scale. Can you make it in my preferred scale?
This often isn't anywhere near as straight-forward as you might think. If it were then everybody would be making transfers! Putting aside the crippling workload, 24/7/365 inbound comms and often unrealistic expectation on a limited resource, usually artwork has to be reverse engineered so that it still looks "right" in the new scale. Not infrequently it's back to the drawing board for multiple rounds of tedious test cycles, particularly where small detail is involved. If I can, I absolutely will, but it's not a given.

6. Can you possibly make transfers for...?
Would love to, but...

• How many different markings are on the vehicle(s) and what - very specifically - are they?
• What are all their dimensions?
• What colours are they?
• What images are available, as in, detailed images which show specific markings? (Links to a Google Images page generally don't hit the mark).
• Did all vehicles of this type look the same?
• What different liveries and other variations were carried over the years?

Once the above research has been done - which itself can take many hours (days in some cases) scouring the web and books - the next challenges are:

• Making the vector design of all the markings at the required size and colour.
  This is tremendously time consuming. Railtec packs (where applicable) don't make every vehicle look the same. Pain-staking attention is given to subtle variations in data panels and other markings to make your stock look realistic.
• Testing each element.
  This may be small scale model railways but this requires the same amount of work regardless of whether the items are being manufactured at 2mm or 1:1 scale. In fact the smaller the scale the more challenging and time consuming the task, as the artwork often has to be reverse engineered to get the elements looking right to the naked eye.
• Figuring out what a suitable pack would look like (one that pleases everybody all the time).

The above is just for one small sub-topic. Multiply that by a continued deluge of requests for new work literally 24/7/365, and you hopefully begin to get the picture. Somewhere amongst this constant slog to research and develop new product, resource also has to be dedicated to:

• Preparing and dispatching the increasing number of web orders for stock items.
• Keeping up with new liveries. These tend to be popular but only for a limited short time.
• Largely dropping most things when TOCs/FOCs/govt organisations (who are kind enough to grant licences to reproduce their trademarks) get in touch to ask for bespoke product within a relatively short time frame.
• Researching and developing new techniques, c.f. 3d waterslide and tampo printing unique numbers.
• Responding to large bulk orders from well known names in the industry.
• Preparing for and attending shows.
• Keeping the web site and other processes compliant with law, new software, etc.
• Trying to have a life!

7. But I've already painted the loco...
Before embarking on a custom project it's always wise to ensure you can get all the pieces you need to finish it, and it wouldn't be reasonable to denigrate anybody for not having the means to develop something to push it over the line for you. Afterall, you wouldn't book a fancy holiday villa and then smear the airline because they don't fly there.

8. I understand, but still, just wondered how you're getting on with...?
Please understand it's not always possible to respond to these types of requests, else the simple fact is that much of this specialist resource becomes little more than an email response service instead of cracking on with the actual work.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Bell, BSc (Hons)
Railtec Transfers