Re: Sumpter Valley Lettering Question

Kevin,
A lot of lettering on steam engines was Railroad Roman. Except of course for those lines that had their own design like the flying Rio Grande, White Pass etc.
I downloaded Railroad Roman fonts available online. Even so, I had to modify them slightly to make them identical to # 19 and 20. Just looking in photos I judge 250 and 251 to have the same lettering as 19 and 20. This would make sense since they were lettered by the same owner.
The most difficult to find today even in "Railroad Roman" is the correct 'R'. The leg on the 'R' used on steam engines and era cars had the leg starting far to the right. I also had to modify the numbers for the front of 250 - 251. It seems to me there was no truly common font used by every RR line, there were all a little different from each other, although Railroad Roman comes close. I have over 100 fonts to choose from on my PC and none are exactly like any I have needed for decals. I just finished decals for Jerry's Mogul #5 and I had to make my own number '5' for the tender. One exception to that is the names on the P&W/W&P GP39-2s in the Willamette Valley near Portland. I found the exact font they used which made making decals for those diesels easy.
Using CorelDraw, I have to convert the fonts to a graphic and modify as needed.
Hope this helps, probably more than you wanted to know.
dan