Does anyone know where we can find stencils for a PFE car?

Suggest you check the drawing list of the California State Railroad Museum library. I just did a search for "Pacific Fruit Express" and "lettering" among the technical drawings and got a return of 24 records. You can usually order copies of these drawings. See the links below for more information.

http://www.csrmf.org/library-and-collections
http://www.csrmf.org/library-and-collections/reproduction-orders-and-permissions

Jim,

Suggest you trace the lettering from the car, clean it up in a program such as Corel Draw, and have vinyl paint masks cut. Any vinyl sign shop should be able to do that.

Richard Wilkens

Jim -

Do you have a photo of the car as it appears today? (I assume that the photo you referenced is NOT the car in question as the lettering on that car is in too good of condition). We have a couple of MDT yellow-orange refers at HVRM and Tom Travis and I decided to try to clean one up a number of years ago. The yellow-orange paint shows a lot of road grime accumulated when the car was still in regular service. We scrubbed the car down removing most of the grime and there was still enough of the lettering left that we were able just hand letter the black right over the original paint. The car has held up very well and one of these days we are going to tackle the other car. As soon as we get time. Yeah right!

I have tried to post photos of our efforts on cleaning up MDT 14070 here a couple of times but have never had any luck. Sorry about that.

If the paint on your car is still in decent shape but just dirty as ours was, you might consider this alternative.

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

Hi

I have a stensil drawing from 1967. If this will help let me know and I will have a copy made.

Tim

Thanks Richard. That's exactly what we'll do.

Jim