C&S Boxcar Questions

[Jerry Huck]

Thanks Chris,
Yes there are several issues with 8027 at this time but they will ultimately be corrected as personnel and funding becomes available. I appreciate your taking the time to assist with the lettering corrections. when the next repaint comes up we will make the corrections. I hope you will be willing to help us make sure the restoration is as accurate as possible. Btw, I remain very skeptical of the roofing :)

Thanks again

Jerry

[Al Pomeroy]

Made a contribution to this fund today, had intended to donate to the phase one car as well but life got in the way,

As to lettering, I have not seen any style drawing for C&S, RGS or D&RGW railroads. if they exist they are a wildly held secret. when I have done lettering for full scale restorations I work with photos, known dimensions (the heights of most of this lettering was dictated by the MCB car builders and latter ARR I believe. so dimensional data was typically 3", car # and name 7" or 9"  etc.

once I do my initial cad drawing, the data is often plotted out full size, and positioned on the car to receive it, and reviewed against it by several interested parties. location dimensions are documented as well. The cad file is then updated and pounce patterns or vinyl masks can be done. I prefer the pounce pattern method for wood cars. it takes more time, is historically correct in many cases as well. vinyl mask tends to remove delicate wood siding pieces at times and is not reusable.

I have even resorted to using decal sets when needed. scan them in and enlarge to a known scale to work on/trace, then scale to full scale.

[Tim B]

Hey Al, When you have a moment, could you drop us an email please? I want to talk about the CAD drawings.
Thanks.

[e-mail]

[Jim Courtney]

Tim and I have been corresponding, I've sent him some drawings which may help with the roof restoration of 8027.

As to lettering, I'd vote for rebuilding 8027 to its original appearance and letter it like its slightly older sister:




Rick Steele printed me some 1:64 decals for the original lettering. If his printer is big enough, perhaps he could provide you with a 1:1 set as well.


Failing a back date, I would always prefer the block lettering to the "button":


Central City, about 1914

Hmm . . . how many C&S freight cars have both a baby portrait and a "sweet sixteen" photo taken?  

Like many second born children, C&S 8027 seems to have been neglected in terms of childhood photos . . .

[jason midyette]

Chris' critique of 8027's lettering is spot on.  (the "LGB" comparison gave me a good laugh as it is sadly also spot on)

 When I first made the lettering several years ago (2011), I determined the size of the lettering using a drawing given to me by Foothill Model Works as well as trying to scale it from the photo of 8038 that is in the Narrow Gauge Pictorial. From this, I determined that the dimensional data used 4" tall letters. (given that the "C&S 8027" on the sides and ends came out OK height wise using this method, I thought I had done OK.) Once I applied the lettering, it was fairly obvious that it was too big. I noticed this at the time, but it slipped my mind until 8 years later when I relettered the car prior to it going to Como. At that point, it was too late to solve. That said, it is just paint, 8027 needs more work and will need to be painted again, so it can and will be corrected next time. While the size error is glaring, the data is at least correct and the font is at least close, so it does not look completely heinous. I really don't like it being wrong, but 8027 is a boxcar again, is home and looks decent, so I am pleased with the results in an overall sense, while grasping that there is a need for improvement.

To provide a little more detail, as I am not at all artistically nor technologically inclined, I used a pretty basic method for making the lettering for 8027; I used the available "Railroad Roman" font and tweaked the font size in Microsoft word to get the letters the size that I needed and then printed them out on cardstock to make the stencils. A low budget hack for sure, but at the time this was a me myself and I project, Como as we know it did not yet exist and no preservation group in Colorado had even the slightest interest in taking on a project such as 8027 at the time. (In retrospect I am glad of this as is caused things to work out so that 8027 is now in Como.)

As to the corrugated metal roof, this is a concession to the fact that 8027 was going to have to live outside. I installed it when I rebuilt the car and I believe that I have always presented it as such. The original roof was comprised of two layers of boards , with about an inch of space in-between them. In this space there were sheets of corrugated metal. The design allowed for water that got past the first layer of boards to drain off the metal, while the metal protected the lower layer of boards. In theory this meant that the railroad would just have to replace the top layer of boards when a new roof was needed. After 75+ years of no maintenance, the roof was entirely rotten and needed to be replaced. Here again I compromised as I could not afford the cost or time it would take to replicate the original roof, I used tongue & groove boards on the edges of the roof (so that when you look up from below it looks like the original roof did), filled in the rest of the roof with plywood and then covered it with new corrugated metal roofing. The goal was to have a roof that looked right from the ground but would last more that a couple of years. I did keep parts of the original roof in case it was ever desired to make a correct replica at some point in the future.

While painting an lettering 8027 in its "as built" scheme would be neat (that was my first thought for it), it would take some work as there are quite a few differences between that car as built and as it was by the end of service. For a start, the siding is different (the C&S replaced a lot of the original 1x4 siding with 1x6 v groove), the grab irons and stirrup steps are completely different, the end door would have to be rebuilt from scratch as would the truss rods that ran across the ends and the automatic couplers would have to go away. On the whole, I felt it was best to restore the car as it was from 1930-1937 (and really probably how it looked from 1918 on, after the safety appliances) than to try and back date it, as neat as the original paint scheme was.  I still stand by this decision today.

Anyway, figuring out the C&S cars is an ongoing learning experience (even after almost 20 years of working on them) and the comments and critiques are welcome as they add to the knowledge base. I know it will drive Chris crazy, but the nuances of Rio Grande cars were a lot easier to learn as there are still enough of the darn things floating around to serve as first person sources. Sadly, there is no such thing as an untouched/unmodified C&S narrow gauge freight car and that does make things harder!

Jason Midyette

[South Park]

  Jason,

  With your humble representation of your skillsets, I must admonish you,
for the group, for not building a time machine and going back and saving
the entire railroad !  Now, we're stuck with incorrect lettering and roofing !
...  and these excuses !

  I expect you will appropriately deprive yourself of pudding dessert as
punishment.

[South Park]

  I picked up a wood car era grab bar in Salida on my last trip through.  
I might presume it is D&RG, but do not know for sure.  Might something
like this be of use/interest to the Como peeps for restoration porpoises ?

  You DO plan on having porpoises, right ?