Lettering the Old-Fashioned Way

Today was mostly spent on starting to letter one side of the letterboard of the 309. We decided that the lettering should be outlined in black, so I started by doing that. As mentioned earlier, the previous lettering job was still visible, so that was used to speed things up. On the left we see me doing the outline.



I use a 1/4" flat lettering brush and a support stick, which is just any old piece of wood with some cloth fastened to one end. Since I'm right-handed, I work from left to right, and the stick is long enough so that I don't have to worry about where it's touching the letterboard. My right hand or wrist rests on the stick, and provides enough pressure to keep it from moving. The outline then looked like this.


We use One-Shot lettering enamel. It dries fast enough that later in the day I was able to start on filling in the letters with imitation gold. I finished just the first word, "Chicago".

I had thought about running the car over to the 50th Ave. platform and using that to do the lettering, but not if there's any chance of rain. So working from a rolling scaffold turned out just fine. And Tim Peters continues to make progress on fixing up the end of the 1268.

I also tried to remove both trolley shoes from the 308 so they can be built up with weld. One of them came out easily, but the other seems to be stuck for some reason. I need to keep the 309 able to run by itself, but even if the 308 was missing both shoes, it could still be operated M.U. with the 309. So I'll have to keep working on this. The pole may have to come off the car.

We Need Help!
On both Saturday and Sunday, July 19-20, we need another conductor to sign up to run the 308-309 in revenue service. We need a trainman on each car, otherwise the runs may have to be cancelled. Please help out if you can - thanks!