Nostalgia & History > Does anyone know how the UP did this?

I've been looking at the UP number shields that were mounted on the Challengers, Northerns and Big Boys and the one thing I've noticed in the close up photos of the shields themselves is the way the top of the numbers and letters were painted almost flawlessly in silver or aluminum........no bleeding down onto the raised sides that were black.  I know that some of the shields had numbers that were made separately and then screwed onto the plate, but for the ones where the numbers or letters were cast into the plates, there doesn't appear to be any "bleeding" down on the raised sides. Does anyone know if the silver was hand painted or sprayed?  If they were spayed was there some type of masking used to keep the silver from bleeding down onto the black?  And just out of curiosity was it silver or aluminim paint that was used on the plates?

If painted, it was probably the skill level of the craftsman doing the painting. I grew up two houses away from a very skilled painter the did sign lettering at Fort Gordon in Georgia for a living but also had a freelance shop at home.

I remember watching Mr. Blanchard paint free hand the lettering and logos on the sides of semi-truck cabs for Dixie Wood Preserving in his driveway. Lettering/logos were as sharp as anything computer generated be it decals or vinyl cut lettering we see today. I can honestly say I never saw him have to eliminate a mistake.

Other possibility is the plates were cast aluminum with numbers being polished or ground off.

Jay

Posted from Android

I don't know what the plates were made of, possibly aluminum or plated brass, but the background could easily have been painted and the numbers could be wiped clean while the paint was still wet. Very simple.

The plates were made of  cast iron and steel from what I've found out. But a good extremely steady hand could probably do the job to if hand painted. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/15 07:12 by apollo17.

It's called craftsmanship which is going away fast in this country.
Steve

I'm 79 and people have been predicting the end of craftsmanship as long as I can remember. I love computers and other digital tools and the way they HELP me with my craftsmanship, just like the tools of old. Visit Colonial Williamsburg some time and watch the craftspeople there at work and wonder at how much time it took to do things we can do in much less time (and with much less waste!)... There's a huge industry helping folks with their crafstmanship...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

I would suspect silk screen priting, which is done (by machine) on every plastic bottle which doesn't use a stick-on label.

Having had a couple of those plates, they're very heavy cast iron and the paint was silver.  I had a bolt-on version (from a Challenger converted to oil and renumbered) and a one piece version from another Challenger,

Alco did this with some builders plates also - not that difficult with a hard roller