Re: C&TS lettering & logo - May, 1981 . . .

Russo Loco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ed Stabler Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > That herald and lettering on 489 is the best
> > the railroad has had in its entire
> history.  I
> > wish they'd go back to it, or at least have
>
> > one or two engines lettered that way.
>
>
> AMEN, Ed -


>
> I'll Second, Third and Fourth that
> motion!!    
>
> . . .  At least for the notorious
> 'Painted Lady' who started it all - #489 - and
> with a slight modification of the logo for
> marketing purposes:
> [attachment 37525 Tenders-2015.jpg]
>
> In fact, I already have a high-res drawing of that
> logo in .tif format, nearly identical to the 40th
> Anniversary logos that Design-a-Sign in
> Pagosa Springs used to create two 24" wide
> magnetic logos back in 2010. (See
> [ngdiscussion.net]
> 68088.)  I'll gladly pay for two vinyl
> press-on logos, also 24" wide by approximately 27"
> tall and the vinyl press-on lettering (6" or 7"
> high RR Roman*), if you can convince Mr. Bush to
> allow #489 to be gussied up (yet again) for one
> more season as a marketing experiment.
>
> - GRAMPS
>
> * Design-a-Sign is the regular provider of
> all of the C&TS' vinyl lettering, so I'm fairly
> sure they have several variations of Railroad
> Roman typefaces available.  The widest
> material their printer could handle back in 2010
> was 24" by just about any length needed, but they
> may have a new printer by now so a somewhat larger
> logo may be possible.

The lettering used back then was discovered by Ernie Robart when he painted and lettered 484 for Scenic Rys in 1976. In scraping down the tender he discovered the original Baldwin lettering. BLW lettered the tender in the same size and font that was applied to standard gauge locomotives, which was an inch or two larger than what was D&RGW standard on the ng power. Ernie traced it off and cut some paper stencils. In the winter of 81-82, I took the disintegrating paper stencils home and created new ones on stencil board for future use. They were on heavy waxed card stock, and might still be around somewhere. We certainly didn't wear them out. In reality, they were never used as "stencils" they were always used as patterns that we chalked in on the tender then hand lettered the tenders. Russ and I frequently did the lettering. Being left handed I started on the right and worked left, Russ started on the left and worked right and we met in the middle of "TOLTEC". We could letter a tender in an afternoon. It was a great source of pride to step back and say "....I did that". Vinyl lettering does create the same feeling of satisfaction.

Heralds took longer as we found the way to do it was to paint the red and blue backgrounds first then put the herald on. Again, we chalked it in and applied it by hand. It took a couple of days for that, allowing for the background paint to dry first.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2016 10:10AM by Earl.