About 4-5 years ago, I was in contact with a gentleman in the Puget Sound area who had digitized the distinctive Southern Pacific Railroad fonts (typefaces):

#1. S.P. steam & diesel locomotive lettering (a variant of Railroad Roman, used for most of the 20th century, before D&RGW "speed" lettering was adopted in the 1990s)

#2. S.P. 1920s-1930s public timetable & posters (IIRC)

Since then a disastrous computer system crash at work, getting laid off, a marriage, and a RR museum move occurred, and in the process I've lost this contact info.

Does anyone knows of a source of these lettering fonts? (I looked at Ben Coifman's http://www.railfonts.com. They sell "S.P. Extended Roman" streamlined passenger car font, S.P. "Daylight script" fonts, and S.P. "Egyptian" lineside station sign font, but not fonts #1 and #2 listed above.)

Font #1 is needed for lettering locomotives & cars at Golden Gate RR Museum.

Font #2 is needed to create new 1920s-style advertising posters, using artwork in the Maurice Logan style.

Thank you very much,
Doug Debs
cell: 650-704-1487

Checking the CSRM Library on-line index I note that they have copies of the passenger car 5-inch high extended alphabet for letterboards. But very little else.

The letterboard alphabet set is from Dec. 8, 1914 and revised Sept. 30, 1946 and contains five sheets. This is probably similar to the UP/Associated Lines drawings I worked with for Orange Empire and produced a CAD copy. The UP drawings carried an adopted date of May 1, 1905, and last revised in 1911. I guess I need to get a copy of the SP drawings to compare with the UP ones.

Maybe some other museum or collector managed to obtain a copy of the freight and locomotive lettering you're looking for.

Send a letter to us unless we have already told you that we don't have the SP fonts. The Pullman companies supplied a lot of passenger and freight equipment to SP. If you have a specific piece of Pullman equipment that will help. Many RR's supplied their own ponce patterns. In that case, we would not have the fonts.
Ted Anderson
Pullman Library
Illinois Railway Museum
P. O. Box 427
Union, IL 60180