Jim's German Imperial Railway project, 2018.

In 2018 Jim Melton designed and built his model of a German Imperial Railway passenger train. Jim and Scot worked together to custom-design a logo, lettering and decals, and Jim then painted and decaled the cars. Jim also created a fictional "fantasy" alternate-reality history for the train. This page documents the entire project.

Update, July 2018, the train is complete! :)

Photos and videos of Jim's completed German Imperial Railway train. Here is Jim to describe the history of his train:

"My fantasy train is the German Imperial Railway. My great-great grandpa, Finneas Melton, was a wealthy, early 20th Century New York Industrialist. He wanted his own unique train to run in the USA, so he went to Germany and found the rusted and rotting hulks of a Zillertal locomotive and a variety of boxcars and passenger cars. People marveled at his restored train, which included 5 passenger cars, a dining car and two boxcars. As in Europe, he allowed only 1st and 2d class passengers access to the dining car and front baggage car. Third class passengers had to provide their own provisions and had to place their luggage in the trailing car along with general goods. Old Finneas, in his obituary, said he hoped his great-great grandson James would model his German Imperial Railway. And so it came to be. With a lot of design help from Scot Lawrence and manufacture of decals by Stan Cedarleaf in Arizona, I completed the project in 2018. The locomotive and cars (formerly a variety of road names and colors) are all LGB. The German Imperial Railway now runs on my Brockport and Western Railroad."

First videos of the completed train! July 8, 2018.

And photos of the completed train:

The Train turned out great Jim! looks fantastic! Thanks for sharing it with the club.

- Scot

From this point down, the rest of this page contains all the planning info that Jim and I shared, as the project was underway, This page is in *reverse* chronological order. Newest posts at the top, oldest at the bottom.

- Scot

Update: June 6, 2018: final lettering and logo count:

From this point down, lettering and logos are photoshopped on the cars, not actually there on the real cars! ;)

they were photoshopped as demos to show what the lettering could look like, as the logos and lettering was planned:

Low resolution demo of decal page, for webpage only, not for printing:

Decals to be printed in yellow:

R: 224

G: 179

B: 38

Car idea 7, smaller GIR lettering across the top, with new GIR logo:

Car idea 8, *no* GIR lettering across the top, with new GIR logo:

Baggage car, Version 1 with original logo:

Baggage car, Version 2 with new logo:

New logo, June 1, 2018

Older concepts below, no longer current:

We talked about the baggage car GIR and the 3rd class car GIR lettering being the same size; that wont work,

because the 3rd class car lettering can be much larger than the baggage car lettering. So, three sizes of GIR lettering:

1. standard (largest size)

2. 3rd class car ("medium" size, custom for the 3rd class car)

3. baggage car. (smallest size)

not a problem! ;)

First logo design, May 11, 2018.

Concept 1 - Original car photo, with yellow logo and lettering. May 11, 2018

Concept 5:

Dining car concept 1:

GERMAN IMPERIAL RAILWAY - CAPS

Font: Bookman Old Style, Bold.

German Imperial Railway - lowercase:

Boxcar concept 1:

Boxcar concept 2:

Ideas out of consideration:

Concept 2 - With yellow logo and lettering, and yellow window sashes:

Concept 3 - Original car photo, with white logo and lettering:

Concept 4 - White logo and lettering, and grey window sashes, (monochrome look, no color)