One very good bit of news is that all of the car cards in the 36 and 319 are in good condition. (I have no idea how to restore ones that are damaged or deteriorated.) Nearly all of them are duplicates of ones we've already seen from the 309, but there are three or four new ones.I vaguely remember ads telling you to write for information on one thing or another c/o your postmaster. I can't imagine that works any more. When did that go out of fashion?
Can you show me the one about the rewarding career in the law?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, Bruce Wells, a couple of years ago at ARM showed how to reproduce car cards rather inexpensively. I believe I gave Frank a copy of the handout that has the blow-by-blow. I'm going to try this myself. I'm going to try these methods to reproduce some St. Louis-area ones for our PCC.
One of the ideas they're trying down the road at FRTM is to take a photo or scan of a given card, and then "clean" it up using Photoshop or similar software.
ReplyDeleteI've given them photo files of 4-5 old CA&E posters, the typical posters that would have been posted at various stations announcing different events and telling you to ride the CA&E there.
Haven't seen any of their efforts as yet, but as an idea, it certainly seems to hold some promise. Also provides a good way to reproduce a replica so the originals can be kept protected.
John C
We've used many reproduction car cards, and even made a couple ourselves. The problem is that you need a fairly good original to start with. If the original is damaged, it can't easily be restored, and many of the old ones are so fragile they'll rip if you try to remove them.
ReplyDeleteYes, I saw all the ad cards piled up in the CA&E cars there in Cleveland and suggested that I would like to photograph them for the archive I have put together at PA Trolley Museum. No luck so far. PTM recently took a contract on a laser/dye-sub copier is capable of prints up to 12 x 48. It does an even better and more economical job of printing the cards than the inkjet I demonstrated at the 2007 ARM. All that is needed is the paper. I also believe in getting the repros laminated because it helps them last.
ReplyDelete