Great Northern 70104 Three Bay Hopper

In between the demands of all the other projects, I have managed to sneak in more work on our Great Northern hopper car lettering.

Reporting Marks

The reporting marks have been applied to the right side, showing the car's true identity for the first time at IRM.

The Last Large N

Dan Fenlaciki helped on this project all day Sunday, seen here peeling off some masking used on the final "N".

Northern

It is pretty tough to get a good image inside the barn with no elbow room to stand back and admire the work.  But NORTHERN is indeed completed on one side.

Great Northern

Here is an overall view of the banner lettering proudly displaying the railroad name.  This is a lot of hand painting and most of these letters have received the second coat of white.

PARTY HEARTY!

The Gang

We celebrated the milestone event of getting this car sandblasted and painted with a shop luncheon.  THANKS TO EVERYONE.  Lots of the volunteers helped on this, and none of the others were left out.  The highlight of the lunch was 7 pints of gourmet ice cream donated by the local CULVER'S.  Just think - pizza and ice cream.  All of the five basic food groups were covered.

Trucks

Ray Pollice started the process of cleaning the truck sideframes a few weeks ago, and Victor Humphreys added his efforts.  Then it was time to apply primer.

Old Grime

Nancy Ring is convalescing from a recent hospital procedure.  What is the best way to do that?  Come on out to IRM and wield a power wire brush to clean a truck on the hopper!

Reporting Marks

I managed a little more painting on the hopper, adding this block of lettering for the reporting marks.  We also added a second coat of white to more of the previous GREAT NORTHERN large letters.

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.