Stevers
Western Thunderer
For Q and U Class locos that I'm building, I'm going to need some BR(S) smokebox number plates. Both are examples that worked the Salisbury & Dorset, and as luck would have it, both contain 6 or 9. On the ex-Southern engines these had curled over and under tails. Neither of the numbers needed are available off the shelf and the current suppliers of custom plates only offer the plain Gill Sans 6 and 9. As an aside I have found examples of curled tail 6s and 9s on ex-LNER engines, but it appears to be only on a small proportion of engines. Ex-LMS engines also had the curly tail 6s and 9s, but on plates with a totally different font.
Nobody I have contacted is interested in etching from my own artwork, and I am reluctant to commission my own etches particularly for something that doesn't need to be metallic, so I wondered how feasible it would be to 3D resin print the plates that I would need.
A QCAD drawing for the plate outline, and 32 lines of OpenSCAD script later I had something that looked really quite promisingly 'Southern'. I sourced the Gill Sans MT font for all but 4s, 6s and 9s for which I have substituted the Source Sans Pro SemiBold font. 'I' has been used instead of '1' for obvious reasons. In 4mm scale the plates are 2.5mm x 9mm, the corners have a 0.333mm radius and the text height is 1.6mm. These things are tiny and my printer only 4K, though as the bed is small the quoted pixel size is 35 microns. As a sanity check, to visualise the pixel size in relation to the text size a 0.035mm grid was placed over some sample numbers:
Given that I can read the smaller 'STEVENS & SONS' on the end of my lever frames this approach looks to be viable. In terms of practicality I shall invest in a bottle of white resin, spray the plates black and rub the paint off the numbers. Whether I print them straight onto the plate or if there is scope for adding the mounting feet on the back is something to be determined.
As examples, two of the engine numbers that I need plus a random T9 to provide an example of all numerals:
I had wondered if I'd have to develop my own font for these, but given how small these actually are, mixing two suitable fonts is probably going to be good enough!
[Edit] While the proportions of the plates look fine and perfectly match photos, further analysis suggests that the plates were the normal size for BR (21"x6") which must mean that the numbers were smaller than the BR Standard - if someone has access to a real plate actual measurements would be much appreciated!
Nobody I have contacted is interested in etching from my own artwork, and I am reluctant to commission my own etches particularly for something that doesn't need to be metallic, so I wondered how feasible it would be to 3D resin print the plates that I would need.
A QCAD drawing for the plate outline, and 32 lines of OpenSCAD script later I had something that looked really quite promisingly 'Southern'. I sourced the Gill Sans MT font for all but 4s, 6s and 9s for which I have substituted the Source Sans Pro SemiBold font. 'I' has been used instead of '1' for obvious reasons. In 4mm scale the plates are 2.5mm x 9mm, the corners have a 0.333mm radius and the text height is 1.6mm. These things are tiny and my printer only 4K, though as the bed is small the quoted pixel size is 35 microns. As a sanity check, to visualise the pixel size in relation to the text size a 0.035mm grid was placed over some sample numbers:
Given that I can read the smaller 'STEVENS & SONS' on the end of my lever frames this approach looks to be viable. In terms of practicality I shall invest in a bottle of white resin, spray the plates black and rub the paint off the numbers. Whether I print them straight onto the plate or if there is scope for adding the mounting feet on the back is something to be determined.
As examples, two of the engine numbers that I need plus a random T9 to provide an example of all numerals:
I had wondered if I'd have to develop my own font for these, but given how small these actually are, mixing two suitable fonts is probably going to be good enough!
[Edit] While the proportions of the plates look fine and perfectly match photos, further analysis suggests that the plates were the normal size for BR (21"x6") which must mean that the numbers were smaller than the BR Standard - if someone has access to a real plate actual measurements would be much appreciated!
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to bring it down to 7mm.
