Sammy -

Will pass your congrats along. Here is Mark's photo of the work he accomplished earlier today. The NYC&StL lettering on the one end of the car was covered with newspaper so that the tracing does not fade in the sun since Mark is going to have to work his rural mail route tomorrow.

Les

Mark managed to make it over to the museum later today and took this photo after he removed the tape from around the NYC&ST.L lettering on the one end of the car.


Les

Mark was at the museum today in the heat and submitted this photo of the now finished south-facing side of NKP 344. Now.......on to the north-facing side where it all has to be done again!

Les

Les,

That's a good looking car now. Tell Mark nice job.

Thought some folks might like to know the story behind the lettering on NKP 344 at Hoosier Valley. The museum did not have a Nickel Plate Road stencil for the letter board of the car. I checked with HVRM's Bob Barcus who said that Bob Albert of the museum told him that those letters were 5" high. Using some photos that Mark Knebel had taken of the car where the paint had been sanded off exposing the original lettering, Mr. Barcus did his vector artwork using the "Adobe Illustrator" program to draw from scratch (with just a bit of artistic license) for Mark to use for the letter board. I think if you check the two attachments, you can see how Bob was able to make the new artwork from the photos of what was on the car. These were also shared with the museum at Bellevue, Ohio who in turn sent the tracings for the NYC&ST.L lettering up on the two corners of the car. The BAGGAGE, RAILWAY EXPRESS AGENCY and AUTOMOBILE tracings were made from standard Nickel Plate lettering from Mr. Albert's collection. Mr. Knebel came up with the star and used that standard Nickel Plate lettering for the cars number.

Hope this might be of interest to some.

Les

Interesting to me at least. Mr. Barcus' drawing approach is similar to mine. I build most of the lettering from rectangles and circles before I do a final outline of the letters, even when tracing from an original drawing. Working with perspective corrected images is a big plus, too.

This is an interesting thread. Probably most of us wouldn't consider painting a car until after the necessary metal work and prep work is done. Unfortunately all of our museums have rusting eyesores sitting around waiting for the day when that work is done. It may seem backword but by painting this car Mark may get some interest up so that someone steps forward and fixes the holes. Even if it doesn't happen at least the car looks good as it sits waiting for the day of full restoration and the metal is somewhat protected.

This reminds me of a business car in the PLA collection. It is in rough condition and some restoritive work had been started but hadn't progressed very far. The paint on it looked about as bad as the Nickel Plate car in this thread with the addition of some body putty filling a bunch of pin holes. The car looks like it has the measels. So one day I had been painting window frames on another passenger car with some good oil based paint and needed to empty the can and clean the brush when I was done. I threw some thinner in my paint can and walked over and painted the corner of the car. The thinned paint in the can covered more than I thought it would and I covered about fifteen square feet. By having it thinned it didn't leave any brush marks. It actually looked pretty good and lasted for about 10 years before it began to oxidize. Even today, about 15 years later, the paint on that corner of the car still looks better than the rest of the car.

Missed two Saturdays at the museum due to family obligations and in those two weeks, Mark finished the lettering on the OTHER side of NKP 344. I've included a photo I took today of his latest work.

Mark is currently waiting for a set of screens being made for the vents up in the celestory roof. In the meantime, he has moved on to another museum project which I will save for another thread.

Les

Superb. And rather fast-- starting in May, I recall?

Can't wait to see what he's got next on his list.

Howard P.

Out of curiosity, what is the name of the font all the lettering (besides the RR name) is done in?
Is that what they call "railroad roman"? I'm surprised that any modern day graphics firm would have anything like that in their system.

I've seen some BNSF units with the engine number on the cab sides done in that roman face... but they're not all done in that face by any means.

I like the looks of it.... makes things look distinguished...

Beautiful!

Is there a final tally on the materials used?

Railroad engineering departments drew up standard lettering sets for various uses. Each railroad had their own styles. What is called Railroad Roman is an approximation of many styles of Roman lettering found on railroad equipment. As close to any kind of universal standards you can get would be from the rail car manufacturers. And, a railroad's lettering evolved over time. Every time I do a lettering set, it requires a lot of research.

Fonts are a digital realm form of typography so unless someone drew a font based on engineering drawings, there aren't many readily available.

Emmo213 -

I asked Mark, and here is the report he recently furnished to HVRM's Board of Directors in what he described as a "past-the-time" project as weather and free time permitted:

Exterior prep and paint of 344 car body used a bit over 18 gallons of paint as follow as below:

8 gallons of primer
4-1/4 gallons of black
6 gallons of green (started with a 1/3rd gallon of old MAB and have 1/2 gallon of Sherwin-Williams left over)
1 quart of gold
4 black spray cans

10 wire cups
9 roller covers
1/2 dozen paint brushes
2 gallons of paint thinner (for clean up)
3 rolls of masking tape
misc.

Mark also furnished this photo to the Board.

Les

That little quart can is too small to see, but am I correct that the lettering was done with One-Shot brand lettering enamel?

Howard -

Dates he gave to the Board were 5/19 through 8/24.


Les