Review

Graffiti - it's everywhere you look. Some call it art, others call it vandalism - it all depends on your point of view. Much of the graffiti is simple tagging, one color and single lines to mark out "turf" or to say, "I've been here." Other times it is elaborate, even to the point of creating whole scenes using a rainbow of color.

Finding graffiti isn't hard, especially if you live in an urban area. The suburbs and rural areas still have some graffiti but not to the extent of the big city urban neighborhoods. Graffiti can be found on everything from dumpsters to buildings to railcars. So it is the perfect addition to tile modern layout, even if it is set miles from the nearest city. The railcars are always on the move and some tars also add their city text to the graffiti. Something painted in Minneapolis can be seen in places like LA, Toronto, or farther in a short amount of time. In St. Paul this summer, I saw a set of cars all graffitied in Florida, showing just how far they can travel.

Until recently, however; it was very tough to recreate the new "paint schemes" added to the boxcars, tank cars, and most of all it seems, auto racks. No decals were available and these "paint schemes" are tough enough to recreate in full scale, much less in miniature. Blair Line saw this dilemma and found a market for ore of its newest products, the graffiti decal. They now offer 43 sets of decals in HO and N scale with 13 images per set depending on the size of the graffiti. These decals are not the simple ones either but the most colorful and interesting ones that can be found, featuring everything from Godzilla to Elvis, as well as a spectacular wildlife scene.

The Decals

Each one was printed very well and neatly packaged. They came with very good instructions - short and to the point. First, one has to identify what to graffiti. I went with a selection of railcars as well as two buildings. The railcars included smooth and ribbed-side gondolas, boxcars, grain cars, an auto rack, and a tank car. The buildings included a factory and a small hardware shop. After making sure each "target" had a clean surface to apply the deals, I had to pick out which deals to use on each car. Luckily, a train had interrupted a short trip to the store that day. Sitting at the crossing I was able to study the graffiti and how I should place it on each car: It was interesting to note that once an auto rack was tagged it seemed to mark it as fair game for other taggers.

They either had no graffiti or loads of it. Studying the graffiti I found that graffiti starts at the bottom of the cars and works up. This makes sense since that is the easiest place to add the graffiti. There was little color co-ordination when it came to tags and cars, some clashed with the colors of the cars and others matched, so there was no need to worry about that when it came to deciding which car should receive which decal.

Once I had picked out which decals to apply to each car I soaked each one in warm water and slid it onto the car. They are just like any normal water slide decals and are very user friendly. I found they were a bit tough to work around ribbed sides but all decals take a bit of attention in these circumstances. Practice makes it much easier and by the time I had applied them all it was really quite easy.

Blair Line recommends using both a setting agent and a spray coating once dry. I prefer to let it dry o its own and then apply a brush-on coat. This is for a couple of reasons - one is that my college bank account can only afford the cheap bottle and the other is that the arts and crafts store I just a mile away while the hobby shop is clear across the Twin cities. Either way works fine, these decals are of very good quality and the sealant just makes sure they will be protected from that unavoidable derailment.

Once the cars had dried and received their coating I took them to the layout to see how they looked. I found that they added another dimension, just like weathering has done to many layouts. The realism is really something; they went above my expectations and that is often tough to do! I added a touch of weathering to take the shine down and they looked like the real deal.

As the cars got ready to go for their first run and the buildings to be put back in place, I went to Blair lines website (www.blairline.com) to do a bit of research on how much they charged for the decals. They are quite affordable, with each pack just $2.50 for the N scale versions. So for $10 you can get up to 12 pieces of graffiti to add to your fleet of railcars or to the towns they pass through - a bargain when considering what kind of work it would take to create this "art work" without the decals.

Summary

With easy to follow directions, quality printing, affordable prices; and quick application times, I would definitely recommend them to my fellow modelers. You see graffiti all the time and if you are trackside railfanning you will almost never see a train without at least one car that has received at least some grafitti. The next time you are looking to add something unique to your layout and don't want to spend the time super-detailing a scene (or already have super-derailed it) think of adding a bit of graffiti. Now that the cars and buildings are carrying their new look on my layout, I think I will have in invest in more of these high quality decals.!.