This photo of Kansas City Southern wood boxcar No. 12579 was taken in 1911 at the KCS's Pittsburg, Kansas shops and sent to the main KCS office in Kansas City, Missouri.

Aside from being a neat photo of a wood boxcar, I think it is notable for showing the lettering process, note the chalk lines drawn on the car to ensure proper placement of the lettering. This implies, that at least for the dimensional data, each line, and potentially each word, was an individual stencil.

Jason Midyette

It's so new, it hasn't yet been weighed!

Jason - I'd bet that the car was hand lettered without stencils. It's possible that they did use pounce patterns. Hand painting was the order of the day - back then sign painting was a craft that you don't see much today. The restorations done at the D&GV shops have been lettered by hand by Eric Werner.

https://www.facebook.com/DGVRestorations/