Good afternoon Pa. railroaders. Your forum is fantastic. Everyone has been not only helpful but friendly as well. I have enjoyed both the written as well as the wonderful photos.
I have a quick question, which I hate to bother you with. Where would I be able to purchase Reading locomotive as well as Reading rolling stock decals. I live in Mass., southside of Boston. Everyone here is either Amtrak, Boston & Maine or New Haven modelers. They are all wonderful people however they look at me with distant eyes when I bring up modeling the Reading. I'm originally from Philly where Pennsy, Reading, and B&O material abounded especially when I was a kid in the 50's. Good times. I miss them dearly and wish I could go back in time and work for the Reading. Alas, life flows like a river and here I am with the Boston Baked Beaneers. It's wonderful to chat with all of you about the Reading Company, where it's always "Spruce Up Time on the Reading." Those of you that remember this slogan are my age. Keep the shiny side up.

Microscale carries a nice selection of RDG decals...all decals available for the 4 RDG diesel paint schemes which I use. They also have decals for RDG passenger,box cars and off set hoppers. For freight cars I highly recommend visiting the company store and using the decals offered here by Tom

Champion "Champ" Decals, Herald King decals and CDS Ltd. dry transfers also did Reading Company diesel sets in HO. These can all be found on eBay and other Internet sale sites. CDS Ltd. may be a bit risky as they are vinyl and about two decades out of production. Champ's F unit's set yellow (Delux gold) is way off; their dad freight and pass. sets are good. Ditto 2771-Chris's advise, use the Reading Modeler store for fresh, accurate freight decals. Bethlehem Car Works also offers Passenger decals.!

To help continue the search, if they can be found, John Hall did some nice sets for steam, box, gondola, covered hoppers, hoppers. I have had good success with the Microscale offset side hoppers, along with the Champ hopper offerings. If doing passenger the Microscale "Reading Company" is way too large, stick with the Bethlehem Car Works sets. Mentioned earlier, Herald King, especially for the red caboose paint scheme. One oddball is Shortline Products, they produce an early variation of Reading truck trailers that were all aluminum in color. I will again mention Tom's decal sets here on the site, I did an F&C XMv with them a while back, two thumbs up! You can always call Steve Funaro up for decals, they sell them individually. Also, Jerry Glow sold his line to Don Tichy, hopefully the GMl/k set will be reproduced, nothing as of yet. Lastly, give Dan Hicks a call, (610)264-9377, he has an interesting selection of Reading and other anthracite roads from the 1930's to 70's, stuff that was never done by the big names in decals.

Bill

I have recently ordered some decals directly from MicroScale as they just didn't seem to be coming through the hobby shop channels even though they were listed on line as available. The Microscale web site is easily navigated too.

I actually called them to see if I could get answers and the call taker was very friendly and I had the hard to find decals quickly.

So if the Bostonian shops can't or won't hook you up, there is a source.

Rob

I have 10 sets of RDG Herald King "Bee Line" loco sets if you want them.