Produce box labels

An important part of my layout operation is perishable traffic from packing houses, typical California regional products of both fruit and vegetable varieties. I have four packing houses on the layout, and of course they would all have shipped their products in the shipping crates of the time. I model 1953, and that was toward the end of the time of wooden fruit boxes; by 1955, the cardboard carton had taken over. But the packing houses I model all still use wooden boxes.

Two of my packing houses ship citrus, one of them a lemon packing house, the other shipping Valencia oranges in the spring. Both would have used the classic “orange crate,” as they were popularly known; technically they were citrus shipping boxes (internet photo below). For more on this, see the very informative Department of Agriculture Bulletin 2013, which I described in a previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/08/produce-shipping-boxes-part-3.html . 

In this photo, you can see the label on the end of box, both its square shape and the fact that it nearly covers the end. Boxes like that shown above were somewhat over-filled for shipping, and in fact that was on purpose. When the top was nailed on, it made a self-springing support. You can see that below (Sunkist photo) in the crates already loaded.

Note in the photo above that the reefer has been pre-iced, that is, ice placed in the bunkers before loading the cargo. These orange boxes, when loaded, weighed about 75 pounds, and since the standard load was 462 boxes, the typical carload of oranges weighed 34,600 pounds, far below even the oldest PFE reefer capacities of 30 tons. 

A somewhat flatter two-compartment box was often used for lemons, and you can see that shape in many surviving lemon box labels. The photo below shows lemons being packed in two-compartment boxes (Ontario City Library collection; from the excellent book, Selling The Gold, Upland Public Library Foundation, 1999). 

A few years ago, I showed in a series of posts my modifications to actual prototype fruit and vegetable box labels, modifying them for the packing houses and towns on my layout. For one of those posts, this would be a good start: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/08/produce-shipping-boxes-in-ho-scale.html . In that post, to choose an example, I showed this original lemon label for the “Sea Breeze” brand:

and I simply modified it for the name and town of the lemon shipper on my layout, as well as changing the quality level from “Red Ball” to the premium level, “Sunkist”:

For another example, I show below a “Big Western” brand label from the prototype Western Packing Co. in the immediate area of my layout locale, which I have modeled as a vegetable packer in my layout town of Ballard. Here is the original label, lacking only the name of my layout town:

and here is my modification:

You will notice that in both these examples, I have striven to retain the “look” of the original design and typography, in a few cases creating letters not in the original, but doing so from segments of the original letters. 

If you are interested in purchasing original labels, there are a great many available, of all kinds and from many growing regions, at such sellers as: https://www.cerebro.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=12 .

The purpose of these modified labels was to produce something that could be put onto HO scale packing boxes at the packing houses on my layout. I will continue with that topic in a following post.

Tony Thompson

A “tribute” industry for the layout

What might I mean by a “tribute” industry? I suppose it could mean a lot of things, but in the present case it turns out to be an opportunity for a tribute for my late and very good friend, Richard Hendrickson. (If you don’t know or don’t remember who he was, you might like to read the post I wrote after he passed away, which I entitled “In memoriam,” and can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-memoriam-richard-hendrickson.html .)
     This all arose at the recent Cocoa Beach meeting last January, where, among other attractions, the Bob’s Photos sales room is always active. I hadn’t actually visited the room yet, when my friend Jeff Cauthen told me there was a Santa Fe passenger photo there that I really ought to see. So I went around to the room, and sure enough, here it was:

It may not be immediately obvious, but the point of interest was the lower right foreground sign, which I enlarge here:

These are even Richard’s initials, R.H., which really stood out when glancing at this photo. And those who didn’t know Richard likely wouldn’t realize he was a skilled woodworker, but he enjoyed that kind of task, and in fact did all the window and door trim when his new house was being built in Ashland, Oregon, so this lumber and millwork company is quite appropriate.
     An important point to make about this sign is that it is obviously the product of a sign painter. There are inconsistencies in some letters and in the shading. I made the same point about signs in my recent clinic about using typography in model railroading (you can read the handout for the talk at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/01/handout-for-typography-talk.html ).
    My layout doesn’t have space for a lumber yard, but I can readily imagine that such an industry is located off the railroad, thus picking up its shipments of lumber at a team track. Then the sign would be used on a truck which might show up at that team track to receive a load.
     Now the “& Son” part of the sign is unnecessary (though Richard did have a son), and as it happens, the last two letters of his name are not “EN” but “ON.” Both changes are easily made while adjusting the sign for model use, and removing the wires which cross the image. The “skew” tool in Photoshop allows the sign to be squared up. I also moved the words beneath the name so they would be close to centered. Here is a rough intermediate stage:

     With further squaring up and contrast adjustment, I printed this out in a suitable size for use on HO scale vehicles. I tried it out on two trucks. One was a flat-bed trailer being used for receiving lumber at a team track (you can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish):

I also tried applying the sign to a delivery-type box van, suggesting the reach of the business beyond its own premises.

     Whether these or other trucks may end up with the Hendrickson Lumber signs, remains to be seen, but I am pleased to add this industry to those that are visible on my layout.
Tony Thompson

Handout for typography talk

This post constitutes a handout for a talk entitled “Using Typography in Model Railroading.” Its foundation is a blog post from some years ago, which I would regard as a kind of “Part 1” to this handout; it can be found at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/type-and-typography-on-layout.html .
     Many of the basic descriptions of type language and concepts came from a superb book by designer Robin Williams, The Non-Designer’s Design Book (Peachpit Press), now in its fourth edition. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a really basic, clear and instructive book. And the prior editions, available for lower prices on the internet, can do almost entirely the same job.
     In the talk, I mentioned a number of typefaces, old and new. The list of them, including their original creators and date(s), is below.

     Sometimes you may see a font, in a prototype photo or in a magazine, that you really would like to try for signage. Provided your sample contains a fair number of different characters from the type, you can go to an amazing site on line that will (usually) be able to tell you what font it is after you answer a set of questions. Here is the link: http://www.identifont.com .
     I also listed some sources on line for free or cheap fonts. Here are a bunch of them:

And if you find a font somewhere that you really like, but it’s not cheap, go to www.fontspring.com and enter the name of the font you like. The site will give a bunch of fonts that are darn close though not identical to the one you like, and there may well be free ones in the list.
     By the way, I support type designers who may be charging for fonts, and I always am happy to pay for them, even shareware, when that is called for. But I realize many people don’t want to invest much in fonts, so I have offered some ways to find useful ones that are cheap or free.
     I mentioned some publications in passing that I list here, just in case anyone might want to  pursue them. One is Lance Mindheim’s book, Model Railroading as Art (CreateSpace.com), which I reviewed recently in this blog (see the commentary at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/06/lance-mindheims-fine-new-book.html ). Another is William Gordon’s book for sign painters,  Modernized Methods in the Art and Practice of Lettering for Commercial Purposes (Signs of the Times Publishing). And I did mention Tony Koester’s How to Kitbash Structures (Kalmbach).
     In concluding, I listed a few books that I thought might repay those interested in delving into type a little further. In addition to Robin Williams’ book, mentioned above, I showed Ruari McLean’s fine basic book, Manual of Typography (Thames and Hudson), and Robert Bringhurst’s magisterial overview, The Elements of Typographic Style (Hartley and Marks).
     My closing remarks included a list of these “Do’s and Don’ts” (you may need to click on the list to enlarge it to be readable):

     It was an interesting challenge to dig through my own experience and resources to assemble this material. Having been the designer and typographer as well as the layout person for numerous books for Signature Press over the last 25 years or so, I do have some background in typography, and I continue to find it an intriguing topic. I hope I conveyed that enthusiasm in this talk.
Tony Thompson

My latest column in MRH

The issue of MRH (Model Railroad Hobbyist) for January 2020 contains the most recent of my columns in the “Getting Real” series. It’s contained in what is now called “Running Extra,” an extra-fare component of the publication, costing about $1.66 an issue if you subscribe. As such, it’s no longer available free for on-line reading or download, but you can purchase an individual issue if you wish (go to: www.mrhmag.com ), at a price, I think, of $2.99.
     This column is entitled “Graffiti,” and obviously it’s about modern freight cars and the graffiti they often carry. I emphasized throughout the article that yes, painting graffiti is a crime — vandalism — and I am not advocating crime. But in the real world, freight cars since the late 1970s have carried graffiti, like it or not, and as with weathering, reality demands that we confront the matter. My position is that I want freight cars to be realistic, which means both weathered and with graffiti (earlier this year, I posted a project along this line; it’s at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/weathering-freight-car-for-1999.html ).
     I spent some time in the article on the history and terminology of this topic, and showed examples from both freight cars and walls of buildings. The reason was not merely to illustrate something everyone has already seen, but to choose some of the images to apply to model freight cars.
     For those who may not have, or may not wish to have, access to the MRH article, I will summarize what I did. There are some very nice commercial decals out there, cited and used in the article, but I wanted to try a technique of using my own photographs for applying to models. Here’s one example from the article, the word “money,” obviously found on a brick wall, with ground below:

The photograph was not taken quite square to the original surface, so the image was squared up in Photoshop, then surrounding areas were removed from the digital images. The lines from the background brick are still visible in the digital image, but disappear when the image is reduced to HO scale. I used decal scissors to cut out the printed paper version.

     A paper overlay like this was then thinned from the back with sandpaper until the edge essentially disappeared, then attached to the model freight car with canopy glue. I also added a Blair Line decal at the left of this overlay (below). After a coat of protective flat finish, the entire car was weathered, and a few scribbled “tags” added. Here is how it looked.

     This was an interesting topic to research, an interesting and challenging topic on which to do field research, and an intriguing experiment to develop this kind of paper overlay technique for freight cars. I plan to do more cars like this for my friends who model late enough eras, and will report further in future posts.
Tony Thompson

Prototype lettering, Part 2

I have long spoken up about accuracy in model lettering, using as a standard, what else, the prototype. Among  my explorations of this topic is this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/small-rant-manufacturer-lettering.html . That is part of the background to the first post in the present series, Part 1, which showed several examples of stencil lettering practice (you can see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/12/prototype-freight-car-lettering.html ).
     Continuing in the same vein, Southern Pacific used stencils for entire words in lettering in later years, for example after 1946, when the initials “SP” were replaced as the reporting mark by the spelled-out road name. Here is an example of the process, with a spray gun being used (SP photo, negative 30630, CSRM).

Note against the car door another of those “half ladders” used for decades by SP painters.
     Another point, mentioned in the previous post, was the widespread use of what was called “stencil paste,” not a liquid paint but a semi-solid material, applied with a short, stiff brush. An example of that use is the photo below, which depicts a workman applying reweigh data by hand, using individual number stencils. Obviously such application did not always result in perfectly aligned and spaced characters.

     At this point, I want to mention something raised previously(see the first post cited in the paragraph at the top of the present post). Nearly all railroads used lettering characters they had designed themselves. Someone on the drafting room drew up a set of letters and numbers, and such a drawing was the basis for making stencils. Naturally this meant that a separate drawing had to be made for every height of letter, from 1, 2 and 3 inches up to 9 inches or more. It is always intriguing to compare the letters of different sizes. Invariably, the thinner parts of each letter are much lighter in the large sizes.
     There has long been, among modelers, a belief in a kind of lettering usually called “Railroad Roman,” and decal sets have been so identified for decades. There is in principle a possible prototype for this, because early in the 20th century, the Master Car Builders suggested a "standard letter," and this was sustained by the ARA and later the AAR. The catch is that no railroad of which I’m aware followed it entirely, though a few (CB&Q comes to mind) did use parts of the AAR alphabet.
     To show what I mean, below is presented the AAR characters, and below them, the actual SP 4-inch letter drawings for each letter and number in the AAR set. You can readily see that they do not match, with the SP numerals in particular being distinctly more condensed than the AAR numerals.

     To conclude, I show the SP lettering process of later decades, now with the workman wearing protective gear, but still using single-character stencils. There is a least a chalk line to guide the application. This was taken at Sacramento General Shop (SP photo).

     Being aware of these processes helps guide us as modelers in how we apply lettering to models, and tells us where we can permit irregularities in lettering, and where it really has to be done right. I will return to this topic in a future post about modeling.
Tony Thompson

Prototype freight car lettering

As modelers, many of us are interested in, and often strive to accurately reproduce. the lettering on freight cars. I am certainly in that group. In that light, I thought it might be useful to describe a little of how the prototype does this lettering.
     Certainly in the 19th century, and in some instances such as billboard refrigerator cars in the 20th century, this lettering (and decoration) of freight cars was done by people with the skills of sign painters. That is, it was done essentially freehand, though certainly guided by drawings or sketches, and the lettering was intended to be of sizes that were standardized, first by individual railroads, eventually by the Master Car Builders for all railroads.
     With the rise of standards came the widespread use of stencils to reproduce the desired characters. Many of the smaller stencils were thin sheet metal. An example is the 1920s photo below of a Class A-50-6 automobile car about to be lettered after repainting at Los Angeles General Shop (SP photo, Steve Peery collection).

Note that the stencils are shaped to fit between the side posts and braces, ensuring that the letters are at the correct height, and that the lines to go above the initials and below the car number are also present. The “half ladder” being used is interesting too.
     Naturally the railroad emblem or medallion was even more suited to stencil reproduction, and in this 1922 photo, you see one in use. Note that the frame hangs from the roof edge, guaranteeing correct height. The photo was taken at Los Angeles (SP photo, Jim Seagrave collection)

Here the painter is using stencil paste and a brush with short, stiff bristles. You can just see the brush in his right hand, in a “fist” grip. (Click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)
     By the 1930s, hand-stenciling with stencil paste had been largely superseded by spray painting, at least for new or major lettering. This was an especially valuable tool for larger stencils, such as the Santa Fe slogan shown below. This photo is from the ATSF Annual Report for 1951.

Evident are the many slender connectors holding the interior parts of the stencil in position. A stencil like this, once spray painted, would be touched up by hand to cover all those connectors.
     With new cars, it was common to make up a stencil for all the capacity data, since presumably every new car would have the same light weight. The photo below, depicting the lettering on what would be UP 101604, shows that the first four digits of the car number, not yet applied, are on a single piece of heavy stencil paper. (UP photo, Clark Bauer collection)

The two men are not wearing any protection against paint dust and vapor.
     Finally, an example of Pacific Fruit Express technique, showing a painter adding end lettering with one stencil having both the initials and the first digit of a series of car numbers (resting on the coupler). He then adds each additional digit by separately stenciling it from a set of all ten digits. The painter’s “eye” was vital in the lettering being aligned and properly spaced. This photo is a PFE’s Los Angeles shop in 1946 (PFE photo, author’s collection)

     These examples show that the prototype took pains to get the lettering in the right place and entirely standardized as to characters, though of course mistakes were possible. The famous example below (D.F. McFall collection) shows a case of the second and third stencils for the word “Maryland” getting interchanged during lettering.

     Understanding how the prototype applied car lettering helps us recognize the places we really need to get the lettering exactly right on models, and where the prototype offers us some leeway. I will return to this topic in a future post.
Tony Thompson

PFE paint schemes — again

I have commented in a number of previous posts about paint schemes for Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars, especially about model manufacturers’ implementation of some schemes. Any of those posts can be found easily using a search term like “PFE paint scheme” in the search box at right. Of particular interest may be a predecessor of today’s post, which can be found at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/replacing-bad-decals.html .
     Let me begin by reviewing what is very well documented and should be well known. From the earliest days of PFE in 1906, car ends were painted boxcar red (which I’ll call BCR). Roofs then were an outside wood-sheathed design, and were BCR also. When metal-sheathed roofs were first applied, they were painted black, but around 1936 or so, they became BCR again. Roof and ends then remained BCR for PFE’s ice cars until 1962, when PFE decided that all its cars, ice or mechanical refrigeration, would have the same paint scheme, black ends and silver roofs.
     Much of this information is contained, in somewhat abbreviated form, in the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Thompson, Church and Jones, Signature Press, 2000), but it is much more completely presented in Dick Harley’s excellent compilation, contained in the SP Historical & Technical Society book, Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide (SPH&TS, Upland, CA, 2016). The book also contains a pretty complete guide for SP cars that I wrote.
     So what’s the problem? One issue is that exceptions to the standard paint did occur, especially in the latter part of the 1950s. Ice refrigerator cars were occasionally photographed with black ends, though they should have been BCR, probably having happened when the shops were painting mechanical refrigerators (which always had black ends) and just didn’t bother to change colors when doing the ends on an ice car. There is also at least one photo of an ice car with the lettering and railroad emblems of pre-1960 PFE, but with black ends and silver roof, again, likely a shop shortcut.
     Should we model these rarities? That’s a personal call, but relevant, because nowadays our good friends at InterMountain Models release some ready-to-run cars with black ends, or in the latest release of Class R-40-25 cars, a car with black ends, silver roof, and pre-1960 lettering, as I just described. Now I know how modelers often fall in love with weird or one-of-a-kind paint schemes, so I would guess that decorating models that way does produce sales, but the more careful modeler may wish to avoid such oddball paint and lettering.
     As it happens, I have a couple of the InterMountain-produced rare-scheme cars myself (one of which was given to me, and one that I bought without realizing the color of the ends). A car or two with black ends might be okay in the late 1950s, but I model 1953, when PFE standards were still pretty consistently observed. Here are those two cars, one wood-sheathed and one steel.

The Tichy-origin wood car in the background here, in addition to its black ends, has the oddball numerals that I think InterMountain inherited from Red Caboose. They really do not resemble the condensed numerals actually used by PFE. Some readers may recall that I have expressed myself previously on this topic (see the post cited in the first paragraph of the present post).

For an example of real PFE numerals, here is a detail of a PFE photo, repeated from the post just cited. It should clearly demonstrate what actual PFE numerals looked like (compare the numbers “2” and “9” in each image).

It may occur to you that I sound a little like a type geek here. Guilty as charged. And if all this sounds familiar, it should; I sounded off similarly last spring (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/small-rant-manufacturer-lettering.html ).
     To correct the car ends will require painting them boxcar red, thus obliterating the old car numbers, and since I am not delighted with the car numbers on the car sides anyway, the cars will both receive new numbers, in a correct size and style, of course.
     I prepared to paint by masking off the car sides and roof. Now masking over the side ladders and grab irons might seem a daunting task, but not so if you use a really flexible masking tape. I used the Tamiya 10-mm tape that I showed earlier ( https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-shout-out-for-tamiya-products.html ). It goes on easily and simply gets the job done.
     Next I airbrushed the ends boxcar red, using a color I like, Star Brand Paint STR-30, “SP/UP Freight Car Red,” and then hand-painted out the offending side lettering using Star’s STR-27, “S.P./P.F.E. Daylight Orange.” This paint dries glossy enough to accept decals with no other preparation. Lettering was done with the outstanding Microscale set 87-501, the recent version with the superb Dick Harley lettering. If you have a set with this number that’s more than, say, 10 years old, please, please, replace it with a new one. You will see the difference at once.

The photo above shows both cars with their new end lettering, and a bit of weathering to match the rest of the model. Note that the wood-sheathed car, as was standard in the early 1950s, has 7-inch end lettering, while the steel car has 4-inch end lettering. And yes, all that small lettering on the lower part of the steel end is available in Microscale 87-501.
     I am happy to have removed these anomalous (for 1953) black ends from these two cars, and can now happily use them in general service on my layout. I’m sure they will be rolling in the next operating session.
Tony Thompson

Panel-side hopper car, Part 2

In the previous post, I described some of the background to the rebuilding of United States Railroad Administration (USRA) hopper cars on the New York Central system. I always liked the look of hoppers rebuilt with the pressed-out side panels, and although my layout only has occasion to host hopper cars from time to time, I wanted to have such a model. That first post is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-panel-side-hopper-car.html .
     In that prior post, I showed the painted but unlettered Tichy panel-side hopper car that I had acquired. I now had a small dilemma. The largest group of NYC System cars converted with panel sides was the P&LE set of 1419 cars (described in the previous post), thus the likeliest to be seen off-line. But partly because there is a good Tichy decal set for the NYC cars, I leaned toward making my car an NYC car. After all, NYC had several groups of these cars, one of them comprising 250 or so cars.
     I went ahead and ordered Tichy decal set no. 10282. Its lettering is an excellent match to the 1933 appearance of the NYC panel-side car shown in the previous post. So before checking the history (no doubt you can see where this is going), I jumped in and decaled one side of my panel-side hopper.

This looks nice and I was enjoying how well it was turning out. Then, unfortunately (in one sense), I decided to check some background while waiting for the decals to be totally dry so I could do the other side of the model. I soon discovered some problems.
     By 1940, these cars were being renumbered into the 832100–832599 series, and before the end of World War II, there were no more cars remaining in the 416000-series numbers. Not only that, but the distinctive, spaced-out initials and car numbers in the scheme shown on the model above had been superseded by a more conventional NYC lettering arrangement.
     Obviously this means that the decals I had applied represented a scheme that was long gone by my 1953 modeling date. But being neither a NYC fan as such, nor much of a hopper car enthusiast, I considered whether I could simply ordain a modest time warp for these cars, so they could retain their 1930s car numbers and paint scheme. Reluctantly, I decided not to add to the many existing compromises already present on my layout by having a completely unhistorical paint scheme and number on this car.
     Instead, I considered whether I should go with the P&LE option. For my 1953 era, P&LE is a better choice anyway; not only did the cars keep their as-rebuilt car numbers in the 37000–38418 range, but 1389 of them were still in service in 1953. By contrast, NYC was scrapping many of its USRA hoppers by 1953, including the panel-side ones. I hunted through my decal stash and came up with Champ set HN-19 for P&LE reporting marks.
     The Tichy decal set could then be used for various capacity data and for its much superior car numerals. It also has a nice NYC emblem, though its lot number is wrong. But I used it. Here’s why. The Tichy decal lot number is 387-H, the correct lot for the cars when they were original USRA hoppers, but lot numbers in the 600s were applied when the panel side rebuilds were done. In cases like this, I adhere to one of Richard Hendrickson’s principles: the important thing is that some kind of lettering is visible above the NYC emblem. Few if any modelers will try to read lettering this small on a passing model.
     Now I went ahead and painted out the reporting marks and car number that you see above, and replaced that lettering with the P&LE material from the Champ HN-19 set.

     The fact that this is a hopper car, and would have experienced heavy use, means that it needs to be weathered fairly heavily. I will confess I stop my weathering short of making reporting marks and numbers impossible to read, since my models are used in operating sessions where their identity needs to be discoverable. But some cars do need to be fairly dirty. I have added paint patches for the reweigh and repacking lettering.

The removable coal load above is a homemade balsa block covered with real coal of “lump” coal size. Modelers often seem unaware that coal was shipped in several sizes, at least four fairly different sizes. Industrial, steam and metallurgical coal were all normally shipped as lump. But take a glance at the photo below, taken at Williamson, West Vierginia on the N&W in 1941 (Library of Congress). ’Nuf said.

Anyone wanting to know much more about hopper cars, and for that matter about coal sizes and coal shipping, may wish to look into the late Bob Karig’s excellent 420-page book, Coal Cars (University of Scranton Press, Scranton, PA, 2007). The photo above is the frontispiece of the book.
     My P&LE hopper car model is now ready to enter service on the layout, and will usually be carrying metallurgical coal, not only from the Pittsburgh Region but from other areas where met coal is mined and a P&LE hopper car might be confiscated for loading. I discussed in a blog post awhile back, the historical fact that eastern and midwestern met coal did come out to the West Coast in some circumstances, including strikes (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/06/coal-traffic-on-my-layout.html ), and obviously this P&LE hopper can represent part of such an event.
Tony Thompson

Small rant: manufacturer lettering

I confess to suffering from an advanced case of “type geek” disease, which manifests itself, among other ways, in noticing when lettering is the wrong shape or proportion. Of course it also snaps its head up when wrong fonts are used, but that’s a different rant. In the present post, I will address freight car lettering, specifically Pacific Fruit Express.
     As regular readers of this blog will know, this is not a new topic for me. Some time back, I posted an illustration of lettering on a Challenger brass model of a PFE Class R-40-26 car, emphasizing how wide of the mark — to state it tactfully — the lettering was, and I included a photo of the Challenger lettering (that post is at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/05/correcting-brass-model-of-pfe-car.html ).
     When I phoned my contact at Challenger, he admitted that the lettering has been turned over to the Korean producer, who had been directed to “match” a prototype photo. Obviously their understanding of “match” was not informed by any typographic knowledge. My solution to the problem was, as described in the post just cited, to repaint and entirely reletter that model.
     To show what we are aiming at, I show below a segment of a prototype photo of a PFE car’s initials and car number (it happens to be a steel car). The details of this Roman-style lettering were a Common Standard used by both UP and SP, and were constant with PFE for decades.

Allow me to call your attention to the proportions of the letters and the numerals, specifically the contrast of thick and thin strokes in the letters, and the somewhat condensed numerals. Sadly, manufacturers continue to ignore this kind of information.
     Today, thanks to the painstaking and meticulous work of Dick Harley, we have superbly accurate PFE decal lettering. I reviewed one of the sets with the new Harley artwork, the set for black-and-white Union Pacific emblems, Microscale set 87-501, at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-new-microscale-pfe-decal-set.html .
     Another set, the one for lettering with the red-white-blue Union Pacific emblem, Microscale set 87-414, has been similarly upgraded, and I used it in replacing some old Microscale car numbers, from a 414 set of the 1990s, to have more correct car numerals (I showed those lettering comparisons here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/replacing-bad-decals.html ).
     Subsequently, that project was extended to a number of the older PFE reefers in my fleet, to bring them all up to “snuff” (see those projects at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/that-bad-decal-project-part-2.html ).
     Despite Harley’s fine work on PFE lettering, manufacturers apparently continue to “wing it” for PFE lettering on models. Here is a recent Red Caboose (now part of InterMountain) lettering area, which you can compare to the lettering shown above.

The numerals are too short in comparison to their width, that is, they are not accurately condensed. The number “9” shows this clearly. And the serifs on the letters P, F and E do not match the prototype.
     For an additional comparison, I show below the PFE lettering from current Microscale set 501, and you can readily see that it agrees well with the prototype photo at the top of the page, while further showing the poor qualities of the Red Caboose lettering immediately above. Again, look at the numbers 9, 7 and 6 in these two photos.

The current purveyor of both its own steel-car models of PFE classes, and of the Red Caboose wood-body cars, InterMountain, does not do much better on its steel cars. Here again, comparing their lettering to either the prototype photo at the top of this post, or to the Microscale 501 lettering immediately above this paragraph, clearly shows the shortcomings of the letters, though numerals are much closer to prototype than the letters.

     I want to emphasize also that there should be no lack of sufficient information on this topic, including copious photographic coverage of PFE, both in the “PFE book,” as it is often called (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Thompson, Church and Jones, Signature Press, 2000), and also in the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society book,  Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide (Harley and Thompson, SPH&TS, Upland, California, 2016), which contains an extensive section, nearly half the book, about PFE, with Harley’s excellent lettering research.
     Luckily, all the problems mentioned above are readily corrected with the outstanding recent Microscale sets I have mentioned in this post. But beware, if you have some elderly Microscale 414 or 501 sets stashed away. The old ones do not have the excellent Harley artwork, which is more recent. If you are thinking of doing some PFE lettering, don’t scrimp. Plunk down the price of the new 414 and 501 PFE decal sets, and find a new home for those old sets . . . perhaps in the round file.
Tony Thompson

A panel-side hopper car

One of the most popular hopper car designs of all time was the USRA (United States Railroad Administration) design of the World War I era. About 22,000 of them were built under USRA auspices, and around 28,000 more were built in the 1920s, as copies or near copies of the original design.
     Although the original design was durable, most of the cars received a range of upgrades over the years, from AB brakes replacing the original K brakes, and geared hand brakes replacing the original vertical-staff brakes, to new sides and new cast-steel trucks.
     There have been lots of publications concerning the USRA hoppers and the later-era rebuilds, but among the helpful ones is a document by C.M. Smith, on the subject of the New York Central fleet of these cars (available on-line as a PDF at this address: https://nycshs.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/usranycshoppers.pdf ). Since NYC had one of the larger fleets of this car type, it’s an appropriate group to examine more closely.
     Shown below is one of New York Central’s USRA hopper cars, this one acquired in 1920 after the end of federal control, and assigned to the Michigan Central subsidiary (NYC photo). You can see the three cross-braces inside which were a feature of the USRA design. Also evident are the drop-style grab irons and the lever-type handbrake. Eventually NYC would own over 13,200 cars like this.

     In the late 1920s, New York Central performed various upgrades of its own, in addition to the brake gear changes mentioned above. One distinctive change was replacement of the three cross-braces of the original design, with triangular braces on the cross-ridge at car center. The photo below shows what this looked like (NYC photo), on an original USRA-design car with vertical-staff handbrake.

     In later years, one of the most distinctive upgrades was replacement of worn or corroded side sheets with new pressed-panel sheets. These were dished so that the side sheet extended to the outside of the vertical side posts of the car. New York Central applied these side sheets to several different groups of cars, Almost 1800 cars of different ancestries in the NYC system were so converted.
     The largest group converted, some 1419 cars, was converted in 1937 at the Central’s East Rochester shop from cars of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie and its subsidiary, the Pittsburgh, McKeesport and Youghiogheny (PMcK&Y). These were renumbered as 37000–38418. One of these cars is shown below (NYC photo).

     Among the NYC cars, perhaps the next biggest batch converted, after the P&LE cars, was a group of about 250 cars on the New York Central roster, renumbered after rebuilding into the series 416100–416599. Here is how the NYC cars looked when converted in 1933 (NYC photo).

     I wanted to model a car of this kind, and wanted to be able to see the dished-out panels on the inside of the car, not just on the outside. So when Tichy Models released an HO scale model, I began to think about getting one. But nothing had happened, until I came across one of the assembled Tichy cars in an auction. Painted silver and lettered for The Andersons grain company (mark AEX), I had no use for it in that form, but realized that I could re-detail and repaint for one of the panel-side cars from the New York Central fleet.
     I began by adding the cross-ridge members inside, simply using 0.015-inch styrene sheet. This resulted in what is shown below (note the unpainted white member at car center).

    The NYC painted its open-top cars boxcar red in my era, so I repainted this model into that color, airbrushing with Star Brand STR-30 “SP/UP Freight Car Red.” This is a nice paint to use, and covers well. Trucks were separately painted grimy black.

     Next came lettering. I always enjoy applying decals or other lettering. Not only do they express some of my interests in type and typography, they bring the model to life (for me), and the model now acquires its personality and name. So this is something I look forward to.
     But for this model, complications arose (which perhaps I should have foreseen), and the lettering became a challenge in several dimensions, including missteps. Thereby hangs a tale, and I will relate it in a forthcoming post.
Tony Thompson

What’s a type foundry?

A type foundry is a place where printing type is cast into molds. Casting of this kind is a typical foundry operation, but because of the low melting temperature, can be done by hand. Type metal classically is lead with added antimony, which makes it much harder and resistant to wear, and usually also some tin. Typically the alloy might be six or seven parts lead to one part antimony, while for very small sizes of type, perhaps only three or four parts lead to one part of antimony, to get still greater hardness and wear resistance. [We metallurgists (ahem) understand this stuff.]
     Foundries doing this kind of casting once abounded throughout Europe and in the U.S., so could I model one? But before thinking about modeling, let’s consider a little history. For centuries after Gutenberg, type and printing changed only slightly, but in the late 19th century, printing by setting of individual pieces of type began to decline. That was because in 1886, the first successful Linotype machine went into use. Invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler, it soon had competition from a similar-concept machine called Monotype. Both could output entire lines of type (thus the name) as a single slug, and were immense labor savers for big-volume typesetting businesses like newspapers and book printers. Within two decades, large printers universally used one of these two slug-setting machines. Smaller printers, especially local job printers, continued to hand-set type from individual pieces of type.
     Meanwhile, the American Type Founders Company was formed in 1892, as an amalgamation of 23 smaller foundries. For the first two years of ATF, all those existing foundries pretty much continued in business, merely using the ATF name, but starting in 1894, a rigorous weeding out of duplicate and inferior typefaces was done, along with closing the smallest and least efficient foundries, in favor of eight regional foundries, chosen from among the original 23. But poor business conditions in the middle 1890s, and the fact that some of the eight chosen survivor foundries were not actually as efficient as desired, led ATF in 1903 to close all but one foundry, their plant at Jersey City, New Jersey, with offices in Boston and Manhattan.  Later their foundry activities were moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey.
     For both ATF and surviving smaller type foundries, it was essential to market new and different type faces, to obtain sales in a declining market. Partly for this reason, in the 1920s emerged a kind of golden age of advertising and promotional printing. Many new and eye-catching typefaces were created, a perfect product for type foundries, because even though type rarely wore out in small job shops, you had to buy the newest faces to keep up with advertising ideas. Thus smaller foundries, along with ATF, thrived in this period. But the Depression greatly changed that, as did World War II, an entire period with far fewer new faces, and less advertising printing.
     Other parts of ATF’s business included the sale of printing presses, along with printer’s supplies, and they offered repairs for printer’s and bookbinder’s equipment. But they, like the few small foundries still operating, were in dire straits by the 1950s. Phototypesetting had emerged as an even faster and more accurate process than Linotype, particularly as offset printing replaced letterpress (type) printing. New typefaces were not always even produced in metal type any more. Only a few stubborn foundries, and a few associated with printing plants, continued in business.
     I wanted to include such a business on my layout, and since an independent foundry was fairly unlikely by my modeling year of 1953, I decided to make it an adjunct to a printing business already on the layout, Caslon Printing. This also simplifies any rail-delivered freight for the foundry, because it would be received by Caslon at their receiving dock. I chose to use a Design Preservation kit, named “Kelly’s Saloon,” as the structure.  Here is that structure, painted but not yet weathered or given signage.

The original sills and lintels here are represented as molded concrete, but because the model represents a non-foreground industry, I have done it as though the painters just painted everything, bricks and concrete, the same color. Note also I boarded up one of the ground floor front windows. Lastly, the various roof appliances are from the Walthers “Roof Details” set (their number 933-3733), though the four little side chimneys are part of the Design Preservation kit.
     For signage, I liked the sign on the Printers’ Row structures from Fos Scale Models, and decided to make one like it. (You can see that kit, now sold out, at this link: https://fosscalemodels.com/products/printers-row-ho-scale-limited-run-kit .) I also wanted to add a sign identifying the foundry as part of Caslon Printing, right across the railroad tracks behind the foundry. For that, of course, I used the Caslon font. Here is the building with both signs:

     It might be wondered whether this building is too small to house a type foundry. But such foundries can be quite small indeed. For example, at the justly renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, a former printing company, the type foundry is a single room, dating to the 1620s. Only a couple of small furnaces and some working surfaces are needed for the process of hand-casting individual pieces of type. I visited this room and greatly enjoyed doing so, as I posted some time back (you can see that post at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/02/type-and-typography-foundations.html ). For more on the Museum itself and its remarkable history, you may enjoy the Wikipedia entry (the entry can be found at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin-Moretus_Museum ). The photo below, from Exeter Working Papers in Book History, shows the Museum’s type foundry room.

In fact, given how little space was needed for the casting work, it is likely that much of any additional space would be used for storage of raw materials and finished type fonts, along with office space, etc.
     So with this understanding of real type foundries, I proceeded with my model. Placed on the layout, my foundry building looks fine in its location at the far end of East Shumala. The tree and billboard are temporary placements, until I decide if another small structure should stand at the street corner (the intersection of Pismo Dunes Road, foreground, and Alder Street). The main building of Caslon Printing is at the rear, across the two spur tracks. (The stock car, stored at the end of one spur, has drifted out into Alder St. but ought not to be there.)

     The idea of having a type foundry as part of my printing business is interesting to me, partly for typographical history reasons, and does serve to generate additional inbound loads of materials for the foundry as part of Caslon Printing. I will see how it works in future operating sessions.
Tony Thompson