Latest from Railroad Museum of New England's shop

uboat2525 · **Joined:** Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:24 am **Posts:** 57

Howard P. wrote:

Thanks to all for the kind comments.

We have done our restoration freight car lettering using stencils for 30+ years. I used to cut the things out of oil stencil board, using an X-acto knife and many thin blades. Some of our cardboard stencils used wire ligaments to hold them together, as the railroads did with the old tin stencils.

The ability to CAD draw and clean up the artwork, and send it to a sign shop for stencil cutting, is really tremendous progress-- a time and work-saver for sure.

Howard P.

I Remember those days - the measuring, the tracing,the final tweaking of the stencils prior to painting, you seemed to have a patient eye, the end results were always boggling, in later years I briefly (2 years p/t) got into commercial graphic installations, and it never had the charm of doing it "OLD SCHOOL" I like paint more than a Decal
the decals for sure are more forgiving

the irony of you and the rest of the industry using the same materials of modern signage to get the authentic appearance of a process forgotten