In his post Bob Kutella talks about passenger cars. And that makes me think of pounce patterns.

A pounce pattern is a full-size drawing or print of the lettering that has holes punched along the outline of the letters or other graphic to be painted. The holes can be punched using a pounce wheel or using a straight pin.

The pattern is aligned on the side of the car, etc. and then a pounce bag with chalk is worked along the design. Then the pattern is removed and the result is the outline of the lettering, etc. Now the painters would fill in the pattern by hand to complete the lettering or design.

I believe that I've seen a photo or two showing mask applied first to a car side; then the pounce pattern applied and pounced; then with a sharp knife the mask is cut using the pattern as a guide. With the inside of the letters removed the mask would then be painted using a spray gun.

Here in Los Angeles after the coming of Amtrak the UP tore up its coach yard. When the painters' room was still standing, but without its roof, a railfan friend of mine scooped up the pounce patterns once used to letter the UP passenger cars. The Santa Fe lettering drawings at California State Railroad Museum are full-size lettering patterns.

Among the patterns saved from the trash was one to letter "OVERLAND" in block letters as used on the Overland Limited cars. This was provided to a private car owner to operated Overland Rail Tours and used to letter the cars. The truck painter contracted for the work was very familiar (in the 1970s) with using pounce patterns. Some of the intricate trailer designs were done with pounce patterns.

With product and technological changes over the years the vinyl lettering or designs has become the commercial way of lettering. As museums we still have the option of using the older techniques, as they may be the most appropriate. Sometimes we have to make concessions as older technologies are just not there anymore; at Orange Empire we have had vinyl signs made up to replace decal transfers used in streetcars.

Brian Norden

> I'm looking for some advice on how to get
> stencils cut so that we can reletter the
> historic Nevada Northern equipment we have
> painted and plan to paint.

> John West

John,

Others have made some very good points, but let me add a few other thoughts.

Do not even think of using vinal stick-on lettering. It looks sort of OK when new, but the edges peel as it weathers, giving a totally incorrect appearance. At least paint or stencil paste still looks like paint or stencil paste as it weathers.

When you take photos of lettering, ALWAYS include something for scale in each image. It can be a ruler or machinist's scale, or a yard stick for long strings of lettering, but you need something to determine both the size of the lettering, and the spacing of the characters and lines.

You didn't mention exactly what kind of equipment you needed to letter, and many of the responses assumed fine lettering on passenger cars. For dimensional data on freight cars, you might consider the interlocking brass stencil sets still available from McMaster Carr and others. While these may or may not be an exact match for what used to be there, at least the lettering font dates back to the appropriate era, unlike what is available from the sign shops today.

If developing your own lettering from photos / tracings, try to save one good example of each character of each size as a separate file. Eventually you should have acquired a full set, which can be used to fill in un-readable areas in photos of other equipment.

To make stencils to either directly paint though or for pencil tracing, consider having some tough material like frosted Mylar laser cut to shape. Present day laser cutters can work off of any number of CAD or graphics file formats, either vector or raster (bit map) files, and can handle more different materials than the typical sign shop vinal cutter. Try doing a Google search on either "laser cutting plastic", which will get you the large commercial firms with unlimited resources, and unlimited pricing, or "laser cut kits" which should turn up the model railroad kit manufacturers who, while using smaller equipment, might be more inclined to work with you because they think the project is neat.

Dennis Storzek

dstorzek@elnet.com

> The specifically challenge has been getting
> the stencils cut. Hopefull, based on the
> suggestions here, I can find a local sign
> shop who can cut stencils for me, or we'll
> end up doing it the historically correct way
> and cut them by hand. I want to do it on
> heavy enough material that the results are
> reusable.

A lot of the prototype stencils were in fact cut from heavy manila type cardstock and some were even made out of sheet metal, if they were planned to be used perhaps hundreds of times.

For our use, we can use paper perhaps 10 times or so with care, and for more durable stencils we use mylar drafing film. It is a little more work to cut by hand with an Xacto knife but still very do-able and in our experience they can be used over and over, build up of paint can be removed with mineral spirits without damaging the stencil, they are very stable over time and are not affected by humidity or moisture. Try mylar sheets from a drafting supply house, you will like it.

Bob Kutella


Freight Car Lettering

68trolley@comcast.net

Dennis, you beat me to the mylar option, but the point is they can be cut by hand, and I wonder how many laser shops there are near Ely, Nevada? If you have cadd files, mylar sheets can be printed full size on large plotters like can be found in architectural supply and blueprint houses, and perhaps in many architect and engineering offices. Not exactly their business but they may help to print a sheet or few.

Cutting by hand may sound intimidating, but not so bad once you get started. And it only has to be done once for the several cars you plan to letter.

Bob Kutella

68trolley@comcast.net

May I add a few minor points - for this situation (irregular surface and many cars to letter) I would recommend a stiff reusable stencil of thin cardboard ("oaktag") and paint applied via spray. I strongly suggest you practice first on some old sheets of plywood or similar to learn the technique, otherwise a goof on the car means you will have to repaint a portion of the car and start over.

Please see this web page for the methods I used to create some new highway signs for the EBT RR, hand-lettered using vinyl stencils and 1-Shot enamel. Note that the stencils were thin outlines as I wished to avoid lifting the underlying paint. I used GMI SM400 vinyl spray mask, which is a heavyweight vinyl very suitable for masking. This stencil is one-time use and is discarded after use, thus I had to make six stencil sets to do six signs.

1-shot sign paint:
http://www.1shot.com/products.html

One source of vinyl signmaking supplies (New Jersey):
http://www.beacongraphics.com/

Jim Vliet

New Road Signs for the EBT RR
jvliet@optonline.net

> Photos are a great help. And there are a lot
> of examples and company drawings to be found
> in the various research facilities like the
> Pullman Library at IRM. Companies often
> furnished the standard drawings of their
> fonts to Pullman to be applied to the order,
> and these were incorporated into the
> builders specification. Regrettably probably
> nothing there to help you on the NN....

> Bob Kutella

Just for sake of discussion, when working from "actual railroad drawings" be aware that you have to go all the way down to this level, to the drawings that call out dimensions, fillet radii, etc. of the letterforms themselves, to be assured that you are getting the correct shape and stroke width. I can think of several instances where model manufacturers, who should know better, have been badly bitten by this.

Most of the lettering diagrams the fans have saved are lettering placement diagrams, which show the entire name or logo relative to the rest of the car. These days, it is easy to scan these drawings, re-size them, and use them as the basis for stencils or artwork. But think for a moment about the situation when these diagrams were created. There was no easy way to re-size a drawing by this amount, so what is on these drawings in not a mechanical or photographic reduction of the actual lettering, but rather the draftsman's interpretation of it, doodled in to scale. Some of it is quite good, some of it is so bad that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for the actual lettering, but a lot of it is just good enough to be a real fooler. The fact is, almost all of these placement diagrams will call out another drawing or drawings where the actual shape of the letters is defined, and only these can be assumed to show the true shape and weight of the letters.

Dennis Storzek

dstorzek@elnet.com

> I'm looking for some advice on how to get
> stencils cut so that we can reletter the
> historic Nevada Northern equipment we have
> painted and plan to paint.

This doesn't really help your specific question but at least shows how one railroad made their boxcar stencils. These stencils were salvaged out of the South Tacoma Shops of the Northern Pacific and are on display at the Northern Pacific Railway Museum in Toppenish, WA. The larger Northern Pacific stencil is in two pieces with an overall length of about 15 feet. It is made of a very light gauge sheet metal with a wood frame around the edges and wire soldered across to hold the stencil tight where the letters have been cut out.
The second two stencils were used together. The right stencil was used to place the underlying white color, followed by use of the second stencil to place the black lettering and black portion of the monad. The red must have been applied last but we did not receive a stencil to do that. The black would have outlined the red area so it may have been painted in by hand. These stencils are about 4 feet across.


shearerd@charter.net

> May I add a few minor points - for this
> situation (irregular surface and many cars
> to letter) I would recommend a stiff
> reusable stencil of thin cardboard
> ("oaktag") and paint applied via
> spray. I strongly suggest you practice first
> on some old sheets of plywood or similar to
> learn the technique, otherwise a goof on the
> car means you will have to repaint a portion
> of the car and start over.

> Please see this web page for the methods I
> used to create some new highway signs for
> the EBT RR, hand-lettered using vinyl
> stencils and 1-Shot enamel. Note that the
> stencils were thin outlines as I wished to
> avoid lifting the underlying paint. I used
> GMI SM400 vinyl spray mask, which is a
> heavyweight vinyl very suitable for masking.
> This stencil is one-time use and is
> discarded after use, thus I had to make six
> stencil sets to do six signs.

> 1-shot sign paint:
> http://www.1shot.com/products.html

> One source of vinyl signmaking supplies (New
> Jersey):
> http://www.beacongraphics.com/

> Jim Vliet

I have been following this thread with interest. One thing that I have not seen mentioned is the possibility of cooperation between the various museums. Although this won't help John West out at the Nevada Northern (sorry John), please let me elaborate.

There are a number of museums that have equipment from the same railroads. Many of this equipment needs repainting and restencilling. Repainting is fairly easy; scrape/needlegun/wirebrush, prime and paint. Now your car looks a heck of a lot better, BUT, no identification. The ideas presented thus far are all fine. But, it is a lot of work for one car. For instance, our museum has a Pennslvania Railroad X50b 50' steel box car. Currently it is in an extremely faded Penn Central green paint scheme. We would like to paint it in the PRR paint scheme featuring a large PRR Keystone herald on the right side with PENNSYLVANIA spelled out in large letters to the left of the car door with PRR and the car number under it. I have photos, but no diagram. But I think that there may be other PRR cars in museums out there that are in a similar situation. Perhaps those museums with similar cars could share the cost of cutting stencils that would fit these cars. Let one museum have the stencil first, pass it on to a second museum, then to a third and so on. And eventually hold on to the stencil for a future repainting somewhere down the road. Does this make any sense at all? If so, perhaps what we need first is a list of freight and yes, passenger and M-O-W equipment, so that museums/owners, can compare what they have and if such a cooperative program would be workable. I sure hope so because our museum also has a NKP gon, a Wabash box, a N&W hopper car, NKP flats, a N&W box, etc. etc.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)

midlandblb@cs.com

Dennis is correct. There are a lot of diagram sheets which are basically schematic of the PLACEMENT of lettering, striping, color numbers of the paints. What we have found and used are the official font drawings of a company. Rare to find but generally full sized sets of every character, often needing several sheets, depending on the height of the characters.

Bob Kutella


68trolley@comcast.net

> I have been following this thread with
> interest. One thing that I have not seen
> mentioned is the possibility of cooperation
> between the various museums.

It is a good idea Les, but I am guessing may be hard to execute. Even on a single car in our collection, there may have been many multiple schemes over the car's life. To find another car in another Museum, sufficiently identical, would also require that they both be depicted in the same era. This may not be possible due to alterations or modifacations, or Museum policy and mission.

As to time, I usually plan to spend up to 200 hours to re-letter a freight car, including the homework, graphics and painting. Thankfully, passenger cars, and trolleys do not have all those notes and dimensional data and are much much quicker.

Bob Kutella


68trolley@comcast.net