I'm working on getting the stenciling right for WM 75, a GE 44-tonner, and hoping to sanity-check my work with folks who know the WM. I'm not near the unit, and too much paint has fallen off for sanding to help. None of the 44's at WRM are the same generation, but Niles Canyon was able to help.

I have an original builder's photo courtesy WMRHS (twice the resolution I show here) and have "squared it" (more like rectangled it) in Photoshop and traced it in Adobe Illustrator. This was referenced to hard measurements taken on the NCRy unit, for instance the doors are 64.5" tall and 26" wide including hinge gaps. I printed it out and cut out a "positive" on paper.


I tried to duplicate the angle of the builder's photo but a hillside and debris are in the way. As it was, I had to 'mow down' a bunch of that grass.

The test stencil seemed to come out exactly the right length but I struggled with vertical, finally arriving at 8" tall letters.

Anyone enough of a WM expert to tell me if I'm off the rails or if something needs fixing?

Is this a SMRS approved project?

xx

xx

Don't worry about it... the sign painter didn't capture the lettering exactly, note the S compared to the builder's photo, and the 5 definitely has problems. It may be a problem with stroke width, hard to tell because of flare in the color image, but EVERYBODY wants to make lettering bolder than it should be. Begs the question, if the lettering was traced in '05, why isn't the tracing on file?

As it is, good forensic work from photos will yeild a better job than you had.

Except that tracing what the sign painter put on the equipment is just another generation removed from the "real deal", because most sign painters don't use stencils; they chalk or pounce through their tracing, using their skill to smooth out any inconsistencies in the job as they go. If that 5 is that way because it was when you got it, that means someone else jazzed it up somewhere along the line, I suspect long after the locomotive left the WM. The biggest problem is every time the sign painter sweeps a curve a second time, the stroke width has just gotten wider. The less skillful the painter is, the wider the stroke gets... we've all seen the results of this on park engines that have been re-lettered several times by hand.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with curators keeping control over restoration work, and you now seem to realize that the tracings should have been reproduced for file copies before they were trashed in the field. But at this point, going all the way back to the original, even via the use of photographs, will cut multiple iterations of subtle changes out of the equation and likely get you closer to the original than tracing the lettering yet again.

The "Western Maryland" on the hoods was plainly a clear fabrication with no tie to historic fabric.
http://www.railroadmichigan.com/southernmichigan.html
It looked like an Internet font and that’s what I think it was. It doesn’t match either the WM Phase 1 scheme. It is closer (but no cigar) and in the wrong position, to the phase 2 lettering:




If the painter said he traced it, he couldn't have because, like I said above, too much paint had peeled off for that to be possible.

The artifacts reveal that the 2005 paint crew was struggling with massive paint failure, and would not have been able to sand-and-trace a reasonably complete tracing. In 2009 merely tracing the 2005 job would have impracticable and a fool's errand, since it's fake.

The paint failure harkens back to a problem at GE. They did not like to pickle their steel (remove mill scale) and delivered new units with fresh paint over mill scale. And fifty years later, it fails regressively in exactly this fashion, between the steel and the first primer coat. All historic layers are gone. This was discovered on SN 652 and 654; on the latter they removed all the old paint and applied Awlgrip; with the former they chipped the loose paint and used Rustoleum, and put it in Carhouse 3.

Now, the compressor doors did a great deal better at holding paint. The “75” is likely to have been sand-and-traced since the typeface is very close to spot-on, albeit positioned slightly off (so cannot be the original 1943 paint). Given the considerable work involved, I was also surprised to have seen no photos of the sand-and-trace in the file. In any case, the 2005 era “75” was not painted over, and is still on the locomotive today.
http://www.railroadmichigan.com/smichge06.jpg
And as you see in this 2014 picture, there's been yet another round of paint failure due to the GE effect.

Tracing can be, at best, and approximation. I'd recommend even tracing "wrong" lettering, just to keep in the artifact's file.

Exploratory sanding is a bit of an art form, and even the tracings one gets have to be cleaned up. I helped Frank Hicks do some sanding on Indiana Railroad 205 at IRM a number of years ago and the final lettering had to be cleaned up considerably as the tracings were incomplete, or the archival sanding revealed goofy looking lettering.

At first glance, that photo is impossible. From the positioning of the "S", you can only be looking at the WM "Phase 1" scheme, and there were several other paint schemes on top of that.


However, I have no doubt that you are looking at original Phase 1 paint. This is something we ran into elsewhere on the unit: delamination between the phase 1 topcoat and the phase 2 primer, allowing it to peekaboo through "intact"... but only in particular spots of its choosing. I assume this had to do with fuel-oil splattering during switching moves in the shop. It did not take kindly to efforts to further separate those layers, as you can see at the rainbow edge. And of course, anywhere the bare-metal separation occurred, the first layer was lost too.

Might have helped in 2002, but there were a LOT of layers of paint and it probably would've taken 100 hours of expert work to expose a meaningful amount. Here is the 2002/5 topcoat over phase 1.

Bit entertaining, actually....... sort of like Trump's campaign, and the Argy-Bargy thing on the other thread.

So it isn't "perfect." None of them were. Possible but imperfect beats nothing done because it can't be perfect. Stop obsessing and go on with making things better as best you can given your circumstances.

There, I've tidied up the thread as best I can. Draconian? Probably, but I am very weary of the personal attacks/trolling/counter-trolling/ego flogging/abusive commentary and airing of dirty laundry.

The thread is now preservation related. Let's keep it that way, please?

Does anyone have a set of the head light shrouds seen in the photos above. I would like to reproduce these for the SMRS 75 and some close up detail pictures or even overall dimensions would be helpful.

I have been volunteering with the SMRS for about 9 months and I am taking over a lot of our mechanical projects.


Thanks,

Kerry Scaife

Has it occurred to anyone that a railroad historical society, in this case the Western Maryland Railway Historical Society (westernmarylandrhs.com) might have the required information, or are these sources only considered useful for model railroaders? I don't know that WMRHS has this info, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

I contacted WMRHS via e-mail regarding anything that they had on the 75 and 76 (preferably even the side of the shade for the headlight) a few months ago and never got a response. Rob is a great job making the 75 look like she just got delivered to WM with her new decals.

This is the thing that can send you off into the sunset muttering to yourself. When I was custom painting brass steam, some roads didn't have correct lettering available so I would have to go through all of this and make correct ones on an ALPS printer.
If you think it's a pain full size, try it in HO scale. I feel your pain.
Someone, somewhere out there has either artwork of company drawings and will surface just after you finish the project.
I still look at Frisco 4524 in Springfield, MO and weep.