British Army Numberplate and badge fonts?

[Bonkin]

For my current project (Diamond T Tank Transporter with Centurion) I'm looking for a suitable commercial solution to decals - but without much success. I'm therefore giving some thought to designing my own decals and either a) printing them myself, or b) getting them printed professionally.

 

A problem I have however is that I am unable to identify the font that was used on the British Army Number plates and logos during the 1950's. Can anybody help me? The picture below shows plates for the Centurion and Dyson trailer:

 

Thanks in advance.

[Kingsman]

Officially, the number plate is the Equipment Registration Mark (ERM).

 

I don't believe they were necessarily uniform or consistent, especially where painted directly onto vehicles - for which stencils were provided.  Embossed metal plates would probably have been produced on the same machines used for civilian plates at the time.

 

I've just had a look at a couple of Archer sets I happened to have out. AR35107 letters and matching 35143 numbers.  I think you could easily use these, although they're not quite the same as the picture above.  The numbers in your picture are quite "square", which certainly wasn't universal.  More rounded numbers were also commonly used.  Several fonts have clearly been used over time.  Plates were often supplied and fitted by manufacturers before delivery from an allocated block of numbers. 

 

"Z" numbered vehicles would of course have been re-numbered from the wartime system, almost certainly locally by unit personnel as every in-service vehicle had to be re-numbered in short order.  Some variation was probably inevitable.

 

One of the most commonly used for a long time on civilian plates is called Charles Wright: I believe it was at one time the official civilian font style.  Your picture above looks very much like this, judging from the square-ish numbers and the square-ended Zs.  It - or something very much like it - certainly was used on military vehicles.

 

You can download this as a Truetype font here (other sources may be available!) https://www.newreg.co.uk/services/dvla_number_plates/acrylic_plate_rules/.  You could use PowerPoint or somesuch to print your own plates with it on white decal sheet.

[Dads203]

I’ve used the Challenger decal set from Echelon, they give you the white numbers and letters to make up any Reg plate that you might might want to use. Also the black background is in decal form so you can cut and use to make any shape required.

 

Very  handy for most post war Brit vehicles not just a challenger tank 

 

https://www.bnamodelworld.com/military-vehicles-tanks-decals-stickers-echelon-fine-details-ec-t35002

 

HTH

 

Dan 

[Centaur95]

'Mandatory' is the current UK Registration Plate font (Civilian and Military) - It's available as a free, downloadable TTF format so you can create plates to your heart's content (a quick Google search will soon give you links to the download sites that carry it).

 

Cheers,

Centaur

[Bonkin]

Thanks all for your quick replies. I will take a closer look.