D&RGW Car Stencils

I've long been fascinated with railroad lettering. What we are seeing more of these days is vinyl lettering cut using a computer program, and though saving a lot of work and completely eliminating any craft element, it seems mechanical, somewhat sterile, and often inaccurate to the prototype. When I looked at the recent posts on the 223, I was struck with the really nice lettering seen on the original tender and engine cab. It turns out that this work probably dates to 1950 when the D&RGW shops prepared this locomotive for display. That prompted me to dig out a sketch book I did back in 1966 where I copied all the stencils in the Durango car shop. The D&RGW's lettering, for much of the freight car work, was stenciled on the cars using these stencils and a stencil brush--I doubt that they used spray equipment as the lettering was usually crisply done, and with spraying, there is over spray where the paint creeps under the edge o f the stencil. I've posted what I did some 44 years ago on my flickr site at:


[www.flickr.com]

Fritz