Hi Folks,

I've done some searching on both Google and RYPN, and I wasn't able to find the definitive answer. What font was used on PRR number plates? I don't believe its the Craw Clarendon that other folks have mentioned.

Forgive me for not knowing the proper term, but it seems close to a standard "casting number" set... almost reminiscent of numbers on a baseball jersey.

Anyway, hopefully this isn't a completely dumb question. :) Also interested in the Baldwin plate font if anyone has info.

thanks,
Joe Comer

EDIT>> Actually, after a little more digging, appears I'm looking for PRR Tracing D-25169. Anyone have a lead? Thanks again. :)

Pennsylvania State Archivist?

A potential problem is that the Archives started being moved to the new building in May and they're not expected to be 'up and running' for research until October 2023.

There might be something in that depot at Lewistown, but I have no real idea what's in there.

Google "Rob's Pennsy Homepage" . You'll find drawings for everything PRR on his fantastic site.

There are font search engines on the internet. You upload an image of a few letters and it will suggest matches and provide examples.

I was trying to identify a couple of fonts used by a motorcycle manufacturer some years ago. One was an easy match, but the other must have been a custom font or something as I never found an exact match.

Thanks, folks! I'll try the font matcher. Rob's Pennsy Homepage seemed to be a dead end, but I'll also keep the PA archives in mind. Thank you.

EDIT>> Being handy with photoshop... I may just end up doing it myself. I'll share the drawings if I do. The font itself is incredibly simple. Largely 45 degree letters, with the edges rounded by a consistent radius. The bottom of the 1, the holes and top bevels of the 2. Hard to tell about the "outside" of the 3. The 4 is is a weird one, along with the 5 with a non-standard radius on the inside top. 6,9 and 0 look straight forward, but the 7 is definitely the oddball. The outside curve definitely looks like some sort of french curve. Anyway... I'll stop obsessing. :)

My guess is that it wasn't a defined "font" like we're used to now.

When those plates were first cast, everything was done by hand.

And just like old signs all being hand painted meant they didn't use "fonts" the way we think of them today, older stuff like this is the same way.

I'm assuming they had a collection of number inserts that they would put into the molds and just cast away. I'm also guessing those number inserts were probably hand carved. It wouldn't surprise me if you notice subtle differences as time went on as new ones had to be made.

Wouldn't THAT be a interesting, if terribly tedious, research project...

FYI, Font isn't the right word. Font is actually the various ways you can change a typeface (such a bold or italic). Typeface is the word for the design for the characters themselves.
In a computer-generated typeface era, 'font' is the word everyone uses.
Hey, so many others here split hairs on words, so I guess this is my turn. I graduated commercial art school in the late 80s, back when you hand-rendered everything and computer-generated type was only accomplished with expensive equipment that only printers could afford.
Most railroads created their own typefaces for not only the road names, but numbers as well. I'd bet a lot that PRR created this typeface in their own offices. Most big railroads had a staff for that kind of thing, back when all type was hand-rendered originally to work the kinks out of it.
And in many such cases, they only created a set of numbers and just the letters to spell out the road name in full.
Everyone thinks that can match a typeface just by going through a book, but good luck with that.
There is NO book or website anywhere that lists the boundless amounts of typefaces created over the years. You could fill a very large library with samples of all the typefaces created in the last 100 years.

If the numeral design, and the stylized lettering for the Pennsy is made up, it will be extremely popular. Pennsy enthusiasts have wanted this for years, but the only person I know of who claimed to have drawn it up never shared it and has recently passed away.
Please make it readily available!

Joe - you’re on the right track. PRR had their own standard lettering set designs. I have scans of some of those drawings and may have the correct number set - I’ll take a look and let you know.

Lee is correct on the “font” terminology. However, I think of typefaces as lettering sets used in printing. Railroad engineering departments just called the drawings “lettering” or “numbers”.

Ed - one thing I’ve learned from drawing tons of lettering is that although the engineering drawing depicts what it’s supposed to look like, what gets made in the shop for casting molds or paint stencils will mostly-kinda-sorta be close to the drawing. Lots of variation if you look closely. Example: I have at least 13 variations of the “standard” P&WV monogram.

Oh yeah, exactly!

I bet that there were even a couple different sets in each foundry too!

I think the best answer is exactly what OP's decided to do: find some original tracings and go from there.

I made a living doing industrial/manufacturing graphics for four decades, and when I began my training back in HS, most corporate logos were anything but consistent. Into the 1970's some outfits were still doing letterpress work here and there with wood type and logos that were already technically antiques. I did not have the smarts to save much of this from the landfill or the upscale coastal "antique buyers" who would come out here and practically steal the stuff from us rubes.

Anyway, things could - and did - drift a bit in details whether one was using a pantograph or a stat camera. The old joke was that if you made a copy, then made a copy of the copy and continued the process ad infinitum, eventually you'd end up with a pretty good imitation of a circle.

Another problem was that frequently some service bureau or printer wasn't given crisp art to copy; on a tight deadline (which was normal), if they cared about the crispness of the final product, most of them would tell the in-house artist/designer to "wing it" if the customer's art was laughable. For the first six years in my career, I painstakingly re-cut crappy logos in Amberlith, cleaning up obvious flaws and then shooting a master as carefully as I could for further use. Reinventing the wheel get old.

One particular granger railroad seemed to have an almost ridiculous amount of variation in their logos depending on who was producing what at any given time... the general public never knew or cared, and apparently, neither did the railroad.

Joe - the tracing number you’re looking for would be correct for the keystone casting. I have a photo of the keystone casting tracing C-89623, Rev. D, 6/11/42 that specs D-25169 for the numbers. I have yet to dig in my archives to see if I have that tracing. I’ll keep you posted.

Hi Eric. Thanks very much,

v/r,
Joe

Joe - Sorry, I don't have that drawing. If you draw these, do note that all are the same height and all but the "1" are the same width. That's why the "4" and "7" look kinda squished. I suspect that the pattern for the "1" may be the same width, though. I can scale the general dimensions off of the number plate drawings if you need them - they do have "sample" numbers on them. However, if you're going to make patterns to cast these, you'll need to get your hands on a copy of the D-25169 drawing.