By the way, it never fails that, after spending hours researching or trying to scale lettering from a photo, and sending out umpteen gazillion requests for help, someone will come up with exactly what you need...right after you finished doing the best you could with what you had at the time. :>)

Me again. I don't think anyone is jumping on anyone's back. A valid question was asked. The museum responded, and that response generated more questions.

Now, lets leave the REA car for a minute...

You raised a bigger question, which is the notion of "rivet counting." In the modeling world I can understand "good enough," but when it comes to historic restorations is it really "counting rivets" to discuss the accuracy of the finish?

Is getting it right really just not that important?

And if so, what are the implications of that?


Ho

So the question should be was the lettering traced off the car before painting or was a computer font selected? I have traced more lettering then I care to think of and I have found almost none that are exactly the same as a computer generated font.

In regards to the main lettering and the reporting marks being of a different style being common, yes I agree with that. Could someone who worked on this be contacted to see where the lettering came from?

I think the point I was trying to make is this:

There are limits to the accuracy of any restoration. Unless you have painting and stencilling diagrams from which to work, and a good photo of the specific car you are restoring in the scheme to be applied, about all you can do is get the best measurements you can off of the existing paint scheme (if that is what is going back on the car) and work from those. Sometimes, even if you do have diagrams and/or photos, you have no assurances that what you are putting on the car was exactly as it was on that particular car.

In an instance I had, a boxcar as received at the museum had a modern version of the scheme that was going to be applied for the restoration. The scheme to be applied was the 1942 as-delivered scheme for that class of boxcars. No remnants of that scheme remained on the car. In spite of having a collection of stencilling diagrams for similar cars (but not that specific class) I still had to resort to "counting rivets" in a builder's photo to get dimensions and placement locked down. Days of effort over months of time went into this single, but most important aspect of the restoration. Half of this class car were built by AC&F, the other by Pullman, and ours was a Pullman car. Had I used the ACF builder's photo instead of the Pullman photo, it would have been wrong. There were subtle differences in the stencilling applied by AC&F vs. the Pullman cars. Had I used the ACL stencilling diagrams instead of the P-S photo, it would have been wrong. Again, subtle differences. The fact that the builder's photo showed a different car than the one we restored (a different road number in the same class series), there is a possibility our particular car originally had some variation and may not have matched the builder's photo exactly. With variations of stencilling by different shops of any railroad, in spite of having a "standard", there were likely to be variations, both minor and major. Is the stencilling correct on our car? Well, almost. It is as close as we could get it lacking good scale drawings of that particular font as developed by the drafting department of the Atlantic Coast Line.

In another instance, the existing lettering on a locomotive tender was determined to have been applied for the purpose of donating the locomotive to the city for display. No photos of that particular locomotive, or any others on that railroad, showed that lettering. I had to work with early photographs of the locomotive and try to scale the lettering to make it look "right". There was no hope of finding lettering diagrams, because the lettering appeared to be hand painted in the best traditions of shortline railroading. In this case, "close enough" had to do. We could do no better.

I don't think anyone has said whether or not the restoration objective was to repaint the REA car exactly as it was prior to the restoration. If that was the intent, it is obvious (to me, anyway) that objective was not met. I am not an REA expert, so I will have to defer to those who are. Perhaps this is very close to one of the variations applied to REA cars. Certainly, it would have been easier to measure the lettering (dimensions and placement) and restored the car to its previous scheme. Maybe that was the intent, but the car got sandblasted before someone thought to do that, or maybe time was not available to do it...I don't know since I wasn't involved. Maybe someone can tell us where the lettering font came from?

I don't think anyone will argue that getting it correct is "just not that important". There are simply limitations to what is considered "accurate".

As a member of the Horseshoe Curve Chapter of the NRHS and as an employee of the Museum I’ll try to shed some light on the project.
1) This was not a project of the Museum but of the Chapter, we have supplied them only with a place to store and show off the car.
2) Yes the font is off! The pre restoration photo showed the only good spot on the car the other side was all but gone and tracing was made very difficult and we had to settle on a computer generated font.
3) We could not spend a lot of time trying to reproduce the lettering because it was being done in an operating railcar repair shop by volunteer employees of the shop and the shop supplying all of the materials of the referb.


I feel that the Chapter has done a good job given the time frame allowed and I would like to personally thank them and Millenium Rail Service for a job well done. I have looked at some models and also question the accuracy of them. One note I make is color, some show this car being a lighter green, which I know it was not.

My only question would be if we become to overbearing on holding a company “ like Millenium “ to the smallest detail, how willing will they be to take on a job such as this, never less do it for free?

I was in Altoona yesterday and saw the REA car up close. I will say that it looks far better up close and personal than it does in the photos. I remember seeing that thing on the siding on the Everett Railroad before restoration and it was a complete piece of junk at that time. Looks great now.

I also noted the Museum has moved into their yard the B60b and the REA reefer to join the K4 tool car and BM70N RPO. Lots of Pennsy passenger cars - so now all that's missing is, ahem, a Pennsy locomotive to pull them. The K4 delays notwithstanding, the Museum has come a LONG way in the last couple years.

Gentlemen: the very idea that all representative examples of the same class of cars from the same railroad were EVER identical in detail at any specific point in time needs to be dispensed with immediately. Didn't happen, people working under pressure using different tools and techniques under different conditions got their jobs done, and the cars out on the road as best they could to start earning revenue.

Doing an intentionally good job of making it as much like whatever documented examples you have is the best any of us can do, and is a damnsight more than any "real" railroaders tried to do in the past.

Found written in pencil under the siding on CRR&B #2: "My boss says I have to finish siding this car today. So much for lunch." This was real railroading, guys.

Let's stop beating ourselves up for doing as best we can, as historically appropriately imperfectly as it may be. Let's especially stop beating other people up who have more succesfully done as best they can then we might have done about meaningless details. Such sniping gets us nowhere, and contributes to a somewhat tarnished reputation to the general public that only sees a very pretty car that looks just like they remember it from being kids in 1946.

Never forget the HO modeler that was upset that my full size real locomotive wasn't just like his model, and therefore it must be wrong.

dave

From my point of view, as the son of a Railway Express Agency career man, I think it looks great, and would like to thank all organizations and personnel involved in the restoration of a monument to the employees of the REAX.

Guys,

A lot of great points are brought up in this thread and I’ve felt the pain of perfection with the lettering on the flat car restoration.

My stencil producer is an artist with no railroad interests at all. This guy use to draw fonts by hand now he uses a computer, his hands hurt. He was able to spot subtle differences in the font from the many photos I had of flat cars, lettering arrangements and builders photos.

What to do???

Perfect is the enemy of good!!!

Slap on a decent coat of paint, do a reasonable job of lettering and enjoy!!!!

Again, Great work guys!
Yup, freight car can be sexy!!

Hmm, now how to get them to that shaker bar in Philly that Eric L. spoke of.

Scott Kwiatkowski
www.prrllc.com

ps, Dave, I love your last paragraph.

Neil,

Thank you for the info. This is an important topic (not specifically about the REA car, but fonts in general). I feel bad that this part of the thread has been seen as sniping by others, as that was certainly not my intention.

I think the key topic, as discussed on the board, is this:

Is lettering a small detail?

You and others on the board whose opinions and efforts I very much respect seem to be leaning that way.I know there is another camp that sees it a little differently. In the long run, it is just paint, so a correction can be made if at sometime it becomes important to the owners.

I know of one small restoration team that made some finishing errors on an otherwise superb rehab, and the car is still "wrong" 20 years later as it has not been cycled through to repaint. But, to this teams credit, they used the experience to set a higher standard for themselves and have since been batting near 1.000 on paint colors and lettering. Perfection is not the goal, as it is too elusive, but they really push themselves to get the finish right.

This is an important topic, and I hope RYPN remains a forum where such things can be discussed openly.

Rob

PS: just to clarify, I was not suggesting that models are often lettered correctly, I was suggesting that sharing research with model companies may prove to be a good habit, especially if you have a car recently modeled by - dare I say - a firm known for rivet counting.

I thought most express packages when via baggage cars or were these cars equipped with high speed trucks? I assume the REA was shipping less than carload lots or did they have an express bulk business?

You are correct. But between major cities, packages would be consolidated. Think of UPS's aircraft and piggyback service compared to their delivery trucks.

REA also had an Express Reefer service for e.g. produce, so it's not unlikely they had large customers that shipped full carloads, especially between large cities, for further sorting and distribution.

JAC

Just a note - the car in question is a reefer that had the collapsible ice bunkers inside for when it was not being used in refrigerated service.

Thanks

This man has captured the true meaning of this restoration.
At the Railroaders Memorial Museum, the "Railroader" , his job and his way of life are what we celebrate everyday.
The point of restoring this REA car and having it present at the museum is to allow us to tell the story of Railway Express Service, what I would call the forerunner to UPS, Fed Ex , ext. Our children certainly know what Fed Ex and UPS are but they don't have a clue what the Railway Express Agency was or what it did. When my child and his classmates come to the museum later this year and see a restored REA Reefer and a restored REA delivery truck, he will learn what REA was, he will learn what the men and women who worked for REA did. Not what FONT the REA used on their express reefers. The story of the work and the people is what is important here, at least in the eyes of the Railroaders Memorial Museum. I am not saying that we could paint it purple with yellow polka dots and still do a good job. However having letters that are not as wide as most of the origional letters just is not that big of a deal in this light.
I understand the need for accuracy but not at "any cost". The cost here to the Museum was ZERO, FREE, GRATIS, FREEBIE !!!!! So I can live with narrow letters.

There is a quirky, but very interesting book called "10 Turtles to Tucumcari" that is an insiders look at REA. The guy who wrote it started as a part time clerk in Rapid City, SD and ended up as a VP before the whole company collasped. It gives a really good feel for how the business worked in the 1930's through the 60's.