> Ken Dabisch wrote:
>
> > Arial was probably not used for any RR lettering. It was a recent
> > (1980's) 'invention' of the word processing business, to avoid
> > paying license fees to the real owners of similar font designs. So,
> > certainly, it was not the font used on any EL equipment.
This is exactly correct. And too many model makers are using modern wannabe
typefaces to try to reproduce the old stuff, rather than trying to find the
old typeface. Helvetica, for example, is timeless, and it is not Arial.
I give Paul Tup. credit for working very hard to get the type as correct as
possible, often going as far as redrawing many of the characters. So many of
the older typefaces are no longer available. And some are. The lettering on
the DL&W baggage car 2038 was made from stencils cut by the very same dies that
cut stencils for the DL&W. The company happened to still be in business, and
I happened to find a sympethic soul in the warehouse who was willing to dig
around the basement to find them and restore them for this order. The
lettering for caboose 896 was not available, though, so Paul Tup. raised the lettering
from a broadside photograph and digitized it. I took those files to a
signmaker and enlarged them to full size from which he made stencils he used to hand
paint the lettering.
(An aside -- after painting that caboose I did acquire various authentic DL&W
freight car stencils that included the tiny DL&W letters that appear above
the door on each end. The basic shape of the lettering was dead-on, but the
authentic stencils were very crude.)
> > I doubt that you'll find an exact font in any of the word
> > processing libraries, although some may be close enough.
>
> Not for older railroads. Most of the time, they had artists create the
> usually unique typefaces for them, though some roads had "canned" fonts
(PRR
> used Craw Clarendon; Santa Fe used Cooper Black). Today's roads usually
use
> off-the-shelf fonts (BNSF *still* uses Cooper Black, Conrail used Futura
Bold,
> etc.)
CPR uses Helvetica Black Italic. Railroads today are wise to use standard
typefaces as any print shop and can produce anything in the company's style. My
employer Morristown & Erie likes a typeface called Chisel, which is very rare
and nobody has it but our Morristown office. That's why you see the road
numbers on the engines in one typeface, and the lettering in another, and the
lettering on the trucks another, sort of.
Anyway, the purpose for this note isn't to talk about type, or the overuse of
the word "font" when "typeface" is correct. But in all of the notes about
the 3607, I didn't see any acknowledge that the original painting of the 3607 at
St. Louis was a Tri-State Chapter / ELHS project. I had seen the peeling
Conrail unit at the museum and made an offer to the curator that if we bought the
paint, would they paint it. He agreed, and it was done. That was almost ten
years ago, and the paint we bought didn't live up to its promotion, so it
weathered early. But it's indeed nice to see that the Museum repainted it. The
drawings came from EMD, the lettering is what the EL used and the number-board
numerals were for the as-delivered unit.
You know you're getting old when pieces that have been restored need to be
re-restored.
....Mike
------------------------------
This HTML page is © 2000-2008 Blue Moon Online System and The Railfan Network
This page and the data contained therein may not be reproduced
for any form of commercial use without the explicit permission
of J. Henry Priebe Jr. or his duly authorized agent.