Hello all,

I’m hoping someone could help me with some info regarding lettering for SP passenger cars. We have two cars we’re working on, the SP 127 “Alamo” and the SSW #1 “Dixie”. The Alamo is nearing the point where we will be able to place the lettering back on the sides of the car. Does anyone here know where we can get the correct font to get the lettering stencils created? Additionally, I’m assuming the SSW used the same font as the SP on their passenger equipment or was it different? Our plan is to paint the Dixie into the first scheme it was released in, the pseudo Daylight scheme. We are hoping to get the cars as accurate as possible. The help would be much appreciated.

Gary Rodriguez - President
San Antonio Railroad Heritage Museum

Gary - there are no fonts for SP lettering. Fonts are a digital typeface. What you need is a copy of the standard drawings of the lettering styles you need. Contact the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society and California State Railroad Museum to see if they have copies in their archives.

When I have scans of lettering drawings, I’ll trace the lettering in a scalable vector format which can be used to print, produce cut adhesive stencils or vinyl appliqués. If all you have is photos, that makes it much more difficult but not impossible.

Good luck.

There are some answers here in your earlier post:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45482&p=314558#p314558

Oops! I forgot I had posted this question previously…. Sorry y’all.

Just ran into some pix of a Pullman car in S.P. service:

https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A224184
https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A224143

Painted by Pullman at Buffalo in April of 1955. I suspect this is the two tone gray scheme.