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Experiences with the graffiti stickers made by Langer Grafix
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We do not know whether you prefer an ideal world on your layout where all the trains are spick and span and one could not even imagine a dirty wall. If you are a bit closer to
reality you might be interested in putting some graffiti on wagons and buildings. But who is skilled at doing miniature paintings properly with a spray gun? That is not necessary, says
Patrick Langer, owner of Langer Grafix, who produces graffiti stickers for model railways.
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Apart from those you will find on his homepage
www.modellbahnaufkleber.de
individually printed shirts and other interesting stuff for model railway fanatics (English language is available on the website). Everything can be easily ordered at his online shop; the sticker sheets
cost from EUR 2,55 (N gauge) to EUR 3,99 (HO gauge and suitable for 00 gauge as well). |
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At the moment you can choose between three different editions - one suitable for trains, another one for walls and one that consists of
graffiti for different objects.
When we got our first sticker sheet we were a bit sceptical. Can ordinary stickers, similar to those children collect in special albums, really be smooth enough to cover
properly the uneven surfaces of model wagons or miniature brick walls? We HAD to try that!
No doubt that it would not be a problem to stick the graffiti on even walls - so we chose large containers with their characteristic grooves.
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Soon we had to realize that on uneven surfaces some extra work is necessary. But be careful: Pressing the graffiti to an object with your fingernails might damage the print. We used the warm air
from a hairdryer to make the sticker film smoother after being put on the object surface just loosely, then we carefully pressed it to the grooves with our fingers.
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Apart from the vulnerability to finger nails the print quality of the graffiti is superb; only a very close look will reveal that they are made of a lot of small dots and marks.
And the miniature ‘paintings’ are true to scale but definitely must have been made by sprayers using a ladder - converted to 1 : 1 size some of them measure more than two metres from the bottom to
the top and thus can only be applied to bigger objects.
So a further edition with some smaller graffiti is number one on our wish list. But maybe the N gauge stickers can be used on smaller
objects as traffic signs etc. on an H0 or 00 gauge layout - we have not tried them yet.
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By the way, the manufacturer promises that all stickers can be removed easily at any time. Okay, that could be proved in a long-range study but is this special quality really important?
We are sure that no one will ‘clean’ a tank wagon that he weathered years ago involving a lot of effort and energy…
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All in all we can recommend the graffiti stickers made by Langer Grafix. Putting some of the stickers on your trains and buildings is an easy way to make your layout look more
reality like. And differently from our actually existing world you can decide yourself which objects will be spared from graffiti…
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