How to create your own E-Pass:

Creating your own e-pass for exchange is farly simple. Just follow the steps below, and you can be exchanging passes with other model railroaders in no time!

1. Decide on a design for your pass. There are several basic things you need to include, and others you may want to, as follows:

   Required:

   • The name of your railroad;
   • the words "Issued To," "Pass No.," and "Date Issued," along with blanks to fill in the information;
   • your name ("Issued By");
   • your website address and/or e-mail address; and
   • the words "Electronic Rail Pass" or "Rail E-Pass"

     Optional but suggested:

   • Your railroad's logo;
   • the scale of your model railroad; and
   • a graphic image associated with your railroad.

   Take a look at other e-passes to get some ideas.

2. Once you've decided on a design, use a graphic editor such as PhotoShop, PhotoPaint, Painf Shop Pro, or any other combination that allows you to save images in either .jpg or .gif formats, and create the pass. Your pass should be around 550 pixels wide by 350 pixels high. This is to keep the file size down as you will be e-mailing this to people who may not have fast modems or large mailboxes. Try to keep the file size under 80kb.

3. Once you've created the e-pass, save the file and keep it as a template. When people request a pass from you just load the template, add their details (name, pass no. and date of issue) and save the image under a new name in .jpg or .gif format. Be careful not to save over your original image.