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Rail Passes |
I've been reading up on collecting the printed Rail Pass and its cousin, the E-Pass. I decided to see what I could come up with.
Bob Boudreau, of the Fundy Northern Railroad and Bob Van Cleef, of the North River Railway Co., helped me with questions I had about the various aspects of rail passes. I had a lot of fun designing this pass and hope to be able to collect a few along the way. I plan on doing both e-pass and hard copy passes.
Rail passes for model Railroaders was done in various manners. I here that one type of card stock was the standard #63 round corner cards, which measure 3 7/8" by 2 1/4". Now we have computers and Avery Labels that come the size of business cards, which measure 2" by 3.5". The name tag labels are slightly larger at 2 1/8" by 3.5". My version of the printed rail pass is going to be on business card size because it is so much easier to get.
| Printed Rail Pass The front of the pass will have the name of the RR, The pass number, who it is issued to and the date. It will also have the RR Herald, location and scale. I also have my NMRA and SER data. |
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The back of the pass will have the System map and the conditions for continued use of the pass. Some of are whimsical and some are a little more serious. |
The appropriate size for the Electronic Rail Pass (e-pass) is supposed to be 550 pixels by 350 pixels, at 72 dpi. My pass ended up being slightly smaller than that.
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Electronic Rail Pass This is what my version of the e-pass looks like. |
I made my passes in Photoshop, but there are other programs that would work also. The card was done in many layers so I could easily move things around and make changes. When someone asks for a card, I can easily make the changes necessary and save the images as a JPEG. I then can e-mail the e-pass to the person making the request.
When I make the printed copies, I will use the Avery Label business cards and print 10 cards at a time, using the Microsoft Word label template.
In any case, there will be no duplicate numbers issued in the e-pass or the hard copy version of the rail pass.
My e-Pass is now ready for distribution. Fill out the form below and let the trading begin.
The following are links to other pass information: