Editable train drawing program?

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HurricanesFEC

New Member
Hello I plan on doing a custom paint scheme for my Kato SD90macs and I'm trying to put my ideas into editable drawing, is there anything available that I can use? Thanks in advance.

This is the scheme I would like to use:D
 


Hello I plan on doing a custom paint scheme for my Kato SD90macs and I'm trying to put my ideas into editable drawing, is there anything available that I can use? Thanks in advance.

This is the scheme I would like to use:D

I do a lot of illustrations in adobe illustrator,it's similar to photoshop but is specifically for illustrators/line art

Matthew
 
The website I linked in my prior post has a lot of drawings of diesels you can download onto your computer. Then you just take the drawing into a program like 'Paint' and "color" it to your hearts content.

You can even combine drawings to get close to what you want. For example this drawing is a combo of two locomotives so I'd have a conventional cab and high short hood that was a hallmark of SRR. It became a "what if" loco.

What if the SRR and the N&W never merged and stayed separate. Its an SD-70, that I high-hooded and lettered for the SRR. This are the very things that you asked for I believe. Here the picture.


SRRSD-70.png


I took an SD-70 drawing and basically erased the front end, then took a drawing with a high short hood and copied an area containing the front end I needed, and pasted it into place. The I copied a set of handrails off another, and did the same to get the bell, plow and other details. It was very easy to do.
 
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Inkscape would be good for this. It's a vector-based program like Illustrator. It's very easy to go back and make changes to colors, font styles, line widths, etc. Best of all.....it's FREE!
Just find a side drawing of the loco you want, right-click on the image and select Copy Image, and Paste it into Inkscape. It's usually best to put each part of your art on a separate layer. It's just easier to keep track of stuff that way. You can Hide things to get them out of the way, or Lock them to prevent them from being selected or edited.

http://inkscape.org/


Steve S
 
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Wow thanks to all who replied, I'm still trying to figure out what color is FEC's funky looking orange compared to Scalecoat or Foquil paint chart
 
For the more custom aspects you can use the excellent and FREE Paint.net and GIMP photo editors.

Google sketchup is free and does 3d but I imagine there has to be better.
 




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