Vintage hand lettered kit built cars

Those are really cool.  I never realized hand lettering was a thing.  Love this board for all that I learn!  Thanks for sharing.

I did a little of it when I had a steadier hand.  I let a USH Berk tender hand lettered C&O by a famous Phillie modeler go on eBay for fifty bucks.  Trucks were worth that. George Stock, I think.  Purchaser was more skilled at eBay; tripled his investment.  Hope the ultimate owner preserved the lettering.

haven't seen hand lettered stuff in years

Very, very cool indeed. It's nice that A: you have been able to aquire these and B: you appreciate them for the historic pieces they are. Oh, and C: you showed them to us! 🙂

Mark in Oregon

One scratch-built car that I have, by an un-remembered builder:

The BLT 7-39 is the actual build date of the model. B&O classed these pig flats as gondolas (O class) as they have sides:

I also have a B&O 65' mill gon (class O-60) built around the same time by the same builder but no photos.

I recently found one of those cast Walthers two-bays in our club donation flow, I thought the hand lettering was interesting and well done enough to keep so I bought it and then gifted it to my brother who loves this early lettering method.

Great stuff, love it ! I have great respect for the old school sign painters and people who can letter models like that.  I consider myself somewhat "artistic" and capable of doing fair work using certain mediums  . I once decided I'd  hand letter a Pinewood Derby car for my son... how hard could it be?  After trying for about an hour there wasn't one legible letter on the car I was ready to fling it across the room.

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Ok, Here is another one, I need to get this on some trucks and then on a shelf instead of in a box.  Factory assembled Lobaugh CNW Route of the Streamliners.  Note the Lobaugh SF printing in the lower corner.  Also note the 1938 catalog comments,  Hand lettered finished car was $17.75 and the decaled car did not include the 400 Route.  Now I have to check the rest of my Lobaugh cars lol.

Actually, I may have to stand corrected on this.  The 1938 version is hand lettered per the catalog, but in 1941 they seem to have introduced their lithographed sides and I think maybe my car is actually the later version with Litho sides even though it has the Lobaugh SF lettering in the corner?  Maybe some comment from the Lobaugh experts, Bob what do you think?  My letters almost look to perfect to be hand lettered, although I would not be surprised if the Litho was based off of hand lettered masters....  Thoughts??

Not well versed in this area.  I have only a small collection of Lobaugh cars - I think all are silk screened or decaled.  I will look closer.

Honestly Dennis, your "400" car looks printed...to me, anyway. 🤔🙂

Mark in Oregon

The hand-lettering on O scale cars just amazes me.  I'm not artistic at all, so the fact that someone could do such an amazing job at lettering something that size is very impressive to me.

I have tried my hand at hand painted lettering on my 1/5 scale live steam equipment, although I use homemade stencils and paint within the pencil lines.  I'll readily admit this isn't as challenging as hand-lettering O scale equipment.  This is a caboose that I built and lettered:

Beautiful Car!

Dennis ..,great hand lettered cars ..

Yes Bill Lenoir built cars ..engines etc ..

Here is a link to see the Scale Model Railway 460 designed by Lenoir ..and a string of hand painted / built cars also by Lenoir ...mid 1930's

Cheers Carey

https://youtu.be/LlCX09ZN4WU

Lobaugh started offering built O scale ...and 7/16ths scale  ( standard gauge )  cars ..in 1935 ...

Auto car ..1936 with price on bottom $14.50

Rock Island box car ...7/16th scale ..was about $30.00 built and hand lettered ..

Professional hand lettered cars ...were expensive

Cheers Carey

@Strummer posted:

Honestly Dennis, your "400" car looks printed...to me, anyway. 🤔🙂

Mark in Oregon

Mark do you mean hand lettered or litho?  I'm leaning more to Litho at this point.  The 1938 catalog showed it as being available factory built and hand lettered, but by 1941 that catalog includes that specific car in the short new section touting cars with Litho sides, so that would seemingly not be out of the question either.  It defintitely is not decaled as there is no film layer what so ever anywhere on the car, and of course the Lobaugh catalogs state that decaled versions do not include the large  Route of the 400 logo parts.  So those have to either have been hand painted or litho it would seem.  I think we all forget that back in the lets say pre 1940's ear probably most everything in daily life was hand lettered and people, well some people, aquired that talent and it was shall we say easy or more normal to them.  Just like draftsmen hand printing all the detail on paper drawings.  Even this was the norm probably until the last 40 years.  I remember having to hand print  lettering in drafting class in the early 80's even though I think we also had the plastic templates, still had to learn.. well sort of learn lmao.  I probably could have gotten more consistent with a lot more practice.  I am alsways impressed with the striping on locos and tenders, but even that as I understand from discussions by Bob and others that there were tricks to straight lines, circles etc even back then that we don't concieve now because we are so far removed.

@Dennis Holler posted:

Mark do you mean hand lettered or litho?  I'm leaning more to Litho at this point.  The 1938 catalog showed it as being available factory built and hand lettered, but by 1941 that catalog includes that specific car in the short new section touting cars with Litho sides, so that would seemingly not be out of the question either.  It defintitely is not decaled as there is no film layer what so ever anywhere on the car, and of course the Lobaugh catalogs state that decaled versions do not include the large  Route of the 400 logo parts.  So those have to either have been hand painted or litho it would seem.  I think we all forget that back in the lets say pre 1940's ear probably most everything in daily life was hand lettered and people, well some people, aquired that talent and it was shall we say easy or more normal to them.  Just like draftsmen hand printing all the detail on paper drawings.  Even this was the norm probably until the last 40 years.  I remember having to hand print  lettering in drafting class in the early 80's even though I think we also had the plastic templates, still had to learn.. well sort of learn lmao.  I probably could have gotten more consistent with a lot more practice.  I am alsways impressed with the striping on locos and tenders, but even that as I understand from discussions by Bob and others that there were tricks to straight lines, circles etc even back then that we don't concieve now because we are so far removed.

you had templates? we learned free hand

Just keeps getting better.

@Dave Koehler posted:

you had templates? we learned free hand

Templates existed at least I thought they did....  again talking 1982-86 ish here.

We were taught free hand as well, and Graded on free hand lol..... But after that I joined the Navy and by the time I got out and went back to school I think CAD was pretty much the norm in the early 90's.  All that said, I can still sketch about anything out 10 times better than any other engineer I work with and that has been very helpful over the years.  The ISO view drawing was very useful for sketching stuff out on a napkin to show how something will or won't work to others that just can't quite conjure it up in their head lmao.

Tell me more about 1/5 scale?  Is that close to 12" gauge?  Can you get inside that caboose?  Really nice work.

I don't think I can share much in the hand-lettering department, but note that maybe old cars of any kind work here?

Alexander aluminum sand-cast, I think.  Lobaugh trucks.

Oh - here is George Stock's work:

Sometimes a bit of hand lettering can help to solve issues in building models when there are no specific decals for it, or in building old kits with preprinted sides.  Here are some samples I've built over the years:

GPEX 766, a 40' 6,000-gallon Pfaudler milk tank car, was built from scraps on hand in 1983 using a photo and some basic dimensions.  The body is basically a wood box covered with rivet impressed thin aluminum (a worn-out metal offset press master) with some added detail, trucks and couplers.  While the lettering and number are decals, the emblem had to be hand painted - twice (one panel for each side) as there were no decals for it.

SFRD 13000 was a one-off 'state of the art' car built in 1948 with a stainless-steel body. It incorporated several features and ideas SFRD tries before applying them in rebuilding its older cars. Stainless steel was not used again.  The body was scratch-built in styrene with an Athearn reefer underframe and car ends in 1987. The Champ decals I used had a different capital "E", and the scripty looking word "West" was too large for the model. So, they had to be hand lettered. When doing this, it helps to use a good quality fine brush and a slow drying paint.

The Gerber car was built from an old Westbrook kit in 2017.  Actually, to build an O scale Westbrook car it took two kits: A body kit, with all needed detail parts, and also an underbody kit with its details and a pair of Varney O scale trucks.  The old, preprinted sides had aged and discolored, having been wrapped in acid bearing period newsprint.  One side was more affected than the other, so the two sides no longer matched. But you can only see on side at a time on the model! To match the colors to paint the details glued on the car sides, I used thinned acrylic artist's paint, mixing each shade needed.  Fussy work to be sure (you need to let each mix test drop to dry enough to check, as the colors tend to change slightly in the drying process).  But it does turn out well!

S. Islander

@Dennis Holler posted:

Mark do you mean hand lettered or litho?  I'm leaning more to Litho at this point. 

I'm saying it looks like the type of lettering you have on say, an older metal side Athearn car. If that's "litho", than that's what I think it looks like...as opposed to hand lettering. 🙂

Mark in Oregon

Ed - your work is always beautiful!  Wish I had that kind of patience with old freight cars.

Dennis, Thanks for posting. Very impressive that some people were (or even today) are very talented artists that they can produce such fine lettering and/or logos.

I myself would be afraid to tempt fate and spray it with any sort of clear coat.

Tom

PS-Very beautiful cars!

Yeah, I'll play the fool,  Just on flat paper with a dull pencil, admitedly first shot, this is what I came up with...  I think a lot of the uncertainly is due to not being prepared or knowing what shapes one will make for each and every letter or symbol lol, and forgetting which letter is next lmao....  It end to go at an angle too it loos like but surprisingly maybe able to keep the letters more or less the same height.  I wonder if this might be worth a trial or two with a paint pen.  Might be entertaining if nothing else...

One thing is to pick a font and actually know how to do the letters before you start.  I hadn't even thought about that here and you can tell I am all over the place.  But I don't think this is any worse than my CNW flat car above...  Patience and practice  I guess like most everything else.....

And thus was born a new career for our friend Dennis Holler!

Tom

@bob2 posted:

Tell me more about 1/5 scale?  Is that close to 12" gauge?  Can you get inside that caboose?  Really nice work.

I don't want to get this thread too far off track, so just a quick response - Yes, my railroad is 12" gauge, and I build my scale rollingstock to 2-1/2" = 1', or approximately 1/5th scale (1:4.8 to be exact).  The long roof in front of the cupola on the caboose was removable, so it was technically possible to ride inside with the roof off, although nobody ever did.  I've downsized in the past couple of years, so that caboose is now on display in a local museum.  I also have equipment that was built by other people/companies, most notably a couple of live steam locomotives.  That equipment (along with some of my own) is kind of like tinplate on steroids - it's not really built to scale!

Sorry for the detour - back to hand lettered O scale cars!