Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Applying the lettering to any newly painted project can be maddeningly slow.  For our hopper there is a LOT of lettering.

GREAT

I am sure you agree that this string of letters looks G-R-E-A-T.

Next

Here is the capital 'N' and the start of the small 'o' being hand painted.

Smaller Stuff

We also began some of the smaller blocks on the car, here the built date.

Set Brakes

At the time this car was built, use of roller bearings were still a novelty.  Often a car would be switched to a spot, and the air dumped and crew would leave.  This note is a reminder to set the hand brake so the car would not later roll off by itself - and that often happened.

More Letters

There is always the need to do the next letter in line.

An H

To speed things up some letters can benefit from the masking of straight lines.  This needs to have a smooth car surface, among other things, and of course very careful placement of tape.  The body of the letter is filled in by hand painting and of course any curves are done completely freehand.

Suspicious Character

While some may think the "H" is suspicious, Jeff Brady came by and caught me in the act!

Almost Northern

And by late Sunday, much of 'Northern' was on the car.  I have chosen to add a second coat of white paint to all of these letters to make them more consistent and durable, and as you might suspect, that adds to the time required.  These large block slant serif letters were a trademark spotting feature on many GN cars of this time frame.