Did you know that Hudson skips used to be clean?

It’s difficult to believe I know. Generally, the only pictures we see of them are when they are battered and caked in mud, dirt, and rust. With that rust eating though to become fully fledged holes. It’s difficult to believe that at one time they were brand new and clean.

I often wondered what they must have looked like brand new, or at least just a few weeks or so old, they must have got dirty very quickly.

Then while leafing through Steve Thomason’s excellent website industrial narrow gauge railways in search of  atmosphere for the revamped challenge layout. I discovered some pictures of skips that were only months old. The rust was starting to build up. But they were quite clearly yellow in colour. Upon delivery this must have been quite the bright yellow indeed, probably matching the hi-vis yellow of the loco’s. On top of that, there was a logo on the side. “HUDSON RALETRUX”. The spelling didn’t do much for me either. But it was there, and working on the theory that you don’t see many Hudson Skips in a relatively clean condition on layouts. I thought that when I assembled the next two Binnie skip kits I have, I’d do them in a relatively clean condition. So I would need decals for this logo.

Hudson “RALETRUX” logo

I call myself a graphic designer. I spent 15 years designing and making signs after four years at art college. But I left the art and design industry behind almost 20 years ago. Things have some along a lot since then. Tasks that were done in design programs like CorelDraw that cost hundreds of dollars back then can now be done in Apps that are free or cost only a few dollars.

I design trackplans in an App called Graphic ($8.99). So I though that producing the artwork for my own decals wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Especially as the typeface was very square. Then I as I started started to work on it, I recalled terms like “node edit” vector/raster graphics, which I knew little about back then and had forgotten most of that by now. But I was confident I could solve those problems. 

Let’s get started…

I opened up Graphic and full of the confidence that working in a new scale brings, started work. It’s true that I got a tad frustrated when I couldn’t add nodes to manipulate things the way I wanted, but the simplicity of the typeface made it quite easy to find a workaround, and after a couple of hours had flown by. I had a logo that I was very happy with. It might not be exactly to scale, but it looks pretty good. Now all I have to do is print it off. Printing my own decals. There’s something else I know nothing about. 

Done! Feeling pretty pleased with myself

The lesson learned from this is to try things. You never know what you can do until you try. I need to take that attitude into other aspects of working in 16mm scale. Already this 16mm scale journey is very rewarding.