Freight Car Decals

Happy new year 2022!

Decals for Great Northern passenger cars are available from Microscale, and they cover the modeler’s needs reasonably well.

Decals for Great Northern freight cars are a much more complex subject.

Box cars of all eras are pretty well covered by existing Microscale, Tichy, Westerfield and National Scale Car, NSC, which was formerly Speedwitch Media, products. Tichy has completed the development of decals for the 2500 aluminum express box car and for the 2600 to 2649 series steel express box cars of 1952. They are available as part of Tichy’s regular line of decals in N, HO, S and O scales. 

Modelers are in good shape for flat cars. Tichy offers decals for all of the GN’s steel 50’ and 40’ flat cars.

As of early 2022, the GNRHS Model Development Team is working with Richard Yaremko and the Precision Design Company, PDC, on decals for the more modern cars built by General Steel Industries, GSI, and Thrall in the 1960s. John Westly and Richard Yaremko are also considering working with PDC to make decals for the GN’s TOFC flat cars rebuilt from 65500 and 66000 series cars. If that is successful, the team will consider developing decals for GN trailers.

Tichy offers decals for GN stock cars, company material sand cars converted from Canton hopper cars, ballast hoppers, and scale cars. Their new sets also cover GS gondolas and hopper cars, as shown on page 18 of Modelers Pages 97 dated December 2021.

Refrigerator cars are partially covered by offerings from Westerfield and NSC. Those are primarily for wood cars. We want to extend the coverage to steel cars. This would include those with the gothic lettering font, which was adopted by WFE, FGE and BRE in 1960. We plan to approach NSC about extending their line of WFE decals.

We see a need to have decals made for the GN’s one series of 40 foot steel mill gondolas, 72500-72749. Talks are underway with NSC in Toronto, Canada since they already produce SP&S decals for that same car.

Tank cars need attention. Some tank car decals will be available once the Funero and Camerlingo high-walkway tank car comes out in the first quarter of 2022. If we can have this set separately, it could be used to letter most of the GN’s company–service tank cars. The GN’s few revenue-service tank cars would be a separate project.

The final area worth attention is maintenance-of-way decals. Before their graphics person left them, Tichy was considering sets of GN road name decals in both white and black. This could be a good basis for including lettering for MofW equipment.

If a decal vendor offers GN decals to the public, the Company Store will not carry those decals. The low sales volume combined with our warehouse costs makes decals in general a bad business proposition for the store. If our Model Development Team works with a manufacturer to develop a decal set exclusively for the store, then we will offer that set. We expect that the decals for the General Steel Industries and Thrall flat cars of the 1960s, for the early TOFC flat cars rebuilt from 65500 and 66000 series cars, for the 72500-72749 series 40 foot mill gondolas, for tank cars, and for MofW equipment may turn out to be store products.