A&A ghost sign

The A&A model has a ghost sign - ok, it's not that ghosty - on its back wall. It's non-prototypical; it's simply an homage to an earlier version of the A&A sign than the one I used on the facade.

The ghost sign is an online image, cropped and sized to fit the back wall, converted to black-and-white, and then printed on a piece of clear decal film with my inkjet printer. To set the image, I sprayed it with several thin layers of Testor's Dullcote.

I thought that such a large decal would be a problem to apply, but it went on rather easily. 

A day or so before decaling I primed the wall by brush painting it with acrylic floor polish so that I had a smooth surface to work with. Immediately before applying the decal, I brushed Microset on the wall while the decal was soaking, and after applying the decal, brushed more Microset on top of it. After a minute or two I carefully pushed the decal into the wall's blocks with a paper towel. The decal didn't tear, and conformed quite nicely to the wall's texture.

When viewed from a distance, the sign has an interesting 3-D effect which makes me glad it was added. I sometimes forget that my modelling isn't for a museum or mass market attraction, but has to be faithful to my memory or feeling for a place, not necessarily verifiably prototypical. Things like this help make a model an interesting object in its own right that puts me back on the right track.