About us

Many thanks for your interest in Ghost-signs.com. My name is Brendan McGrath and I came up with the idea of producing printed miniature ghost signs as one-offs for our OO gauge railway layout at home. Faced with some rather bare walls on Metcalfe and other cardboard kits I figured there would be massive decorative potential from this fascinating part of advertising history.

I also realised that there was a time when the signs were more vivid than today and, with different levels of fading, they could be used for pretty much any era - modern or historic - so enough modellers might be interested to make it worthwhile going into production. 

The red brick background was created from scratch to complement the colour and pattern of Metcalfe cardboard kits, but can also be used on other brands or scratch-built models - particularly if used as a complete wall. I hope to add a choice of other textured backgrounds for each sign in the future.

Expansion into the range of container sides was also inspired by our own train set. Having got some rather grubby Hornby container wagons on ebay, I set about designing some more realistic replacements to the faded and torn paper stickers. After many tests with paper stock, printer settings and colour profiles, I think I've finally managed to get a pretty good match. Again, I hope to introduce a greater range in due course.

This is very much a cottage industry (or more literally Victorian terrace house industry), with designs created in InDesign, processed and degraded in Photoshop and then printed on my big Epson Stylus Pro 4000. Hopefull the functionality of this 123-Reg eCommenrce package will work as intended, but if you experience any glitches please get in touch.

These are the first of hopefully many designs, so please come back and check for new releases or visit our Facebook page and follow me on Twitter by clicking the links below.