Ontario Express

All Photos from Author’s Collection or imaged by the Author except as noted

Displaying the “New York Ontario & Western” lettering with which we are so familiar is Osgood Bradley Combine (AAR Classification CE) – Smoker at Middletown on May 30, 1935. This car will, no doubt, be included the flowing day in one of the O&W Decoration Day special trains that were a staple of passenger service, and which for years marked the traditional beginning of the Borscht Belt summer season.

The somewhat unique lettering style used by the O&W on its passenger cars has been a continuing source discussion and intrigue for as long as I have been modeling the O&W. Now, with a few uncovered additional bits of information I will try to add some further sense to the railroad’s practices or, at the very least, add further to discussion or controversy, as the reader might wish. To some degree, the following is a tale of my own search, and searches to resolve the different passenger car lettering(s) of the O&W, and my own modeling results.

Since passenger cars and passenger service were such a salient part of the O&W service, its history and the decline and demise of the railroad, modeling O&W passenger cars has long been a pursuit of my own, and of other O&W modelers, as well. HO scale modelers were benefited by the 1973 efforts of Nickel Plate Products to import brass models of the Osgood Bradley cars that were delivered to the O&W in 1922; — at the very peak of O&W passenger service. Needed foremost to accurately (or at least plausibly) paint and finish these models were sets of wet slide decals in the lettering style so tied to the O&W. Jay Diamond (most coincidentally an old Law School classmate), Wayne Daniels and Bob Mohowski, as some of the movers behind of the old Ontario & Western Technical and Historical Society, provided enough information to the Champ Decal company to induce them to make decal sets.

With all fairness to those early efforts, and to Champ, the particular layout of the letterboard lettering was more suited to cars built and lettered at a much earlier time than the OB cars. While those sets included specific car numbers for OB Baggage, RPO, Combine- Smoker cars and coaches, the artwork used included the “arrowheads” at either end of the letterboard arrays, and also bracketing the car numbers. Those additional features can be clipped from the decals as applied, and these sets are still of use to modelers today.

A well known builder’s photograph of open platform combine No 302, taken outside the Jackson & Sharp plant in Wilmington, Delaware clearly shows the earliest style and arrangement of O&W passenger car lettering.

My own observations of O&W passenger car lettering set me on a quest to produce O&W passenger car decals which would include lettering omitted in the Champ sets. Specifically, the Champ sets did not include any of the Parlor Car names, that stylized lettering for the head end cars; –

“United States Mail Railway Post Office” for the OB RPO cars No.s 170-171-172, nor did those sets include the lettering for the OB Baggage cars No.s 525-526-527; – “Railway Express Agency” so that was the primary mission for me to create my own decal sets. The first real hurdle was to find the suitable lettering style in order to create the artwork. I poured through numerous books of type fonts to no avail. A local commercial decal producer, SMP Industries, could provide no help either.

Osgood Bradley RPO car No. 170, at Middletown clearly displays the lettering that identifies its purpose as a Railway Mail Service car.

No. 525, also from the Pullman Standard owned Osgood Bradley plant, at Worcester, Massachusetts, displays the Railway Express lettering in the same unique style as that included on the letterboard

I knew I’d seen this style of lettering, other than on O&W cars, but couldn’t for the life of me recall where……….that is, until I happened to catch it being done. No, I’m way too young to even have seen an O&W car with this lettering, much less to have seen it being applied, but seeing it made I surely did. It was window lettering! I noticed one day, in a small New England town, an old time sign painter working his art, in reverse of course, on a window in a downtown “Main Street” business district. Revelation, or epiphany, that was it; — the style was a sign painters letter font.

The always frugal [more on that notion, following here] and “tighter-than-bark-to-a-tree-Yankee-thrifty” O&W, while it did have plenty of passenger cars to keep in shape, likely would not necessarily have had a dedicated sign painter on the premises………at least for the top notch job expected of a First Class passenger car, replete with plush and oriental rug aisle runners. Sure, plenty of chaps in the paint shops could letter freight cars with stencils (the relatively few the O&W had), but then again, couldn’t passenger cars be a different matter?

Now, that’s but a theory, and without any real proof, but the lettering used by the O&W is that unique, or rather stylized, and it does match the art of the old time sign painter. So, somewhat tongue in cheek, and ignoring that this stle lettering was used by other roads (with only Atlantic Coast Line coming to mind) I christened this “Middletown – Orange County New York sign painters’ railroad car extended.” I once mentioned this notion to Bob Mohowski, and I think he found it amusing. I think also he entered it into his personal calculus amd assessment of my sometimes whimsical nature…….

To make an unnecessarily long story short, I got a neighbor lady artist to create an O&W alphabet, copied it numerous times and then cut a pasted the artwork together (remembering please that this was 1983 and my own first home computer was still a year away(!)) and sent it to a printer for a properly scaled and reduced sized negative. Bob Ellis of Concord Junction Decals printed up the sets I needed. All of my own sets, and those produced by Champ were printed in Dulux Imitation Gold; — a rich yellow tone.

These two photos show finished Osgood Bradley steel car models imported in 1973 by Nickel Plate Products. Both are lettered with the well known and standard steam era styles, produced in Dulux Imitation Gold, and with the decal sets that I made in the 1980s.

A couple of years ago Bethlehem Car Works produced a resin cast kit for a Boston & Maine wood baggage car. While resembling the O&W wooden Baggage (AAR Classification “BE”) cars, the distance between the door sets was longer than on the O&W cars built both by AC&F and by the O&W in the Middletown car shops. In 2006 BCW produced the exact model of the O&W cars, and that was the subject of a product review by me that was published in RMC in the September 2006 issue. The BCW model is from the series numbered 510 – 524, and included a set of decals. There was some consternation among modelers due to the BCW decals being printed in gold leaf, since the prevailing theory was that Dulux Yellow, or a light Imitation Gold, were the correct colors and shade.

In digging for information to include in the 2007 Observer which will be (is) devoted to my further research about O&W passenger cars and O&W passenger service, I came across an interesting internal O&W memo. The original memo was of only modest quality, so I have reproduced it in a typescript (mimicking the courier typewriter type of the copy that came to me). I’ve mentioned earlier the frugality of the O&W, and this memo bears out the detail and lengths to which the O&W “bean counters” went about in their efforts looking to save pennies……..wherever…….

Original from Walt Kierzkowski Collection – typescript image by the Author

Aside from the detailed calculation needed to justify the concluded savings of $8.67 per car in lettering costs by changing the letterboard from the 56 characters of “New York Ontario & Western” to “N.Y.O. & W.” a proposed savings also implied the elimination of gold leaf in favor of yellow paint only. It appears that the gold lettering of the BCW decal lettering of the BE kit was not at all incorrect……..at least for cars lettered in 1925, and earlier, or until and if the change was actually effected as the O&W rotated its cars through the paint shops.

This is the finished HO scale BCW BE kit, completed with the Gold lettering supplied with the kit and, as now learned, compliant with the period painting and lettering practices used by the O&W shops.

Since I have often viewed period photographs, for a variety of reasons, as less than a final and definitive authority for identifying many features of a prototype, and specifically colors……..I have taken the preceding model photograph and, without any other changes, rendered it in black and white. This’s the gold lettered model, using the BCW gold decals, but absent a color image it’s impossible to determine how the lettering is colored.

I’ve written before how some peculiar happenstance, or more than one, has inspired me to write for this column. Here the December 11, 1925 memo was one part of the immediate inspiration, but there’s yet another part. This memo speaks to the cost savings to the O&W by using the less involved abbreviated lettering, which’s all I’d ever noticed in most photos of closed vestibule head end cars……..both wooden and steel, but coach and Parlor photos seemed to indicate that those cars retained the full lettering suites. The last portion of the inspiration here came from a wreck photograph.

While I don’t specifically seek out or make much effort to collect wreck and accident photos, I do recognize that such images can provide some interesting details of equipment, history or railroad operations. Historic photos of a derailment accident on the Middletown Branch involved a steel RPO car tipped on its side, and the exposed underframe displays all of the otherwise hidden detail there that a modeler, at least, could desire.

A couple of years ago I ran into old acquaintance Bob Haines at the railroad show in Kingston, where he showed me a file folder of some old O&W photographs, which he allowed me to borrow and scan to digital images. Of particular interest were some wreck photos of a grade crossing accident that took place at the old roadway alignment at Summitville.

A recent posting on the Yahoo! Steam Era Freight Car List redirected my attention to the data base of Interstate Commerce Commission accident reports. A listing of accidents for the O&W led me to quite haphazardly pick a single accident, for which I read the ICC report. To my surprise the specific report information sounded eerily familiar, and then in looking back at the Bob Haines photos in my collection I realized that the accident report upon which I just stumbled was the same wreck recorded in those images. Another article here was at hand.

On July 24, 1933 engine 240 pulling train No. 404, consisting of a 1200 Series milk car, two wooden coaches and steel underframed RPO collided with a truck at a grade crossing on Old Kinston Road about 1170 feet north of the Summitville depot. This accident, involving the death of engineer Seth Jackson, was investigated by the Interstate Commerce Commission (as was the case then with all railroad accidents including an employee fatality). The six page accident report itself is an interesting, albeit lengthy, snapshot of the investigatory workings of regulatory government in action but, coincidentally as I described above, that report No. 1839 told the story of the accident in the Bob Haines’ photo album. When I first saw the Haines photos the feature that intrigued me was the image of the derailed wooden bodied Postal Car.

Here the former style of lettering is seen on the letterboard of the derailed RPO car involved in the 1933 grade crossing accident at Summitville. Bob Haines Collection.

This Nickel Plate Products RPO model, from the mid -1980s is lettered with the full road name, as was the car in the grade crossing accident. After looking at the edited image from my own digital camera it surely seemed that I’d omitted the Railway Post Office lettering………but, after digging the model out of its storage box, another look showed the extra lettering was certainly there! Don’t the photo images play tricks, especially when such things are least needed? The noticeable lack of electrical equipment, particularly the absence of a battery box, tells us that this car, for the period depicted by this image, still retained its Frost Gas interior lighting. In December of 1925 also, the Railway Mail Service published a lengthy set of regulations for cars providing its railroad contract services, and one requirement was for the installation of electric lighting. Postal cars that were not electrified were either retired to company service or scrapped altogether.

HO scale NPP car no. 161 is lettered according to the recommendations (to the full sized O&W, of course) made by the General Passenger Equipment Superintendent in the 1925 memo, and in the brilliant Imitation Gold lettering printed by Concord Junction Decals.

This NPP car No. 168 is the single door design (or rebuild) and which has been updated to comply with RMS regulations that electric lighting be provided for interior illumination. Although with some color shift, this car is lettered with gold leaf, and that’s a feature which nearly disappears with even the most minimal amount of weathering.

This last photo of the grade crossing accident again shows the full letterboard decoration of the Postal car that was victimized in this incident. Also easily visible is the Commonwealth Cast Steel Company queenpost that is a significant part of the very substantial “kits” made and sold to railroads for use in Postal Car rebuilding to comply with the RMS regulations. Bethlehem Car Works makes castings, that are sold as a part of its “KitBits” line, for both the queenpost cross bearers and the intermediate additional cross bearers. Bob Haines Collection.

This is an advertising Diagram made up by Commonwealth Steel touting their after market steel underframes originally intended for Postal cars. Since safety concerns dictated, with the arrival of steel passenger cars to the O&W, that wood framed cars not be placed in a train consist with [heavier] steel cars trailing, the O&W applied these frames to several of their Parlor Cars, and a number of baggage cars previously equipped with only wooden underpinnings and truss rods. For resistance against the tendency of the car bodies to deflect under load, the inclusion of truss rods was a continuing specific feature of this design. Only later built cars, with deep fishbelly center sills, eliminated the truss rods, on O&W cars and passenger cars elsewhere.

Other than this image I’ve not seen any of the steel OB head end cars lettered only with the “N.Y.O. & W.” initials. Most images show these cars with the fuller lettering, but the economy minded, and by then Bankrupt, O&W evidently sought to both simplify painting and save money with abbreviated lettering, on this car at least. I’m guessing the reason for the rarity of any photos of steel cars with this lettering is simply that the O&W, as cost saving measure, did minimal repainting of these, or any passenger cars (other than to prepare them for sale off line, or to change the overall paint scheme, as was the case for Mountaineer cars or those RPO, baggage, and AC&F parlor cars, and Car No. 30 that were redecorated in diesel scheme colors) after the Bankruptcy filing in March 1937.

To bookend and conclude this study is a photo taken of one of the steel RPO cars in the thicket that has grown up, by the end of the 1990s, in the Baumann’s scrap yard at Childs, PA. This location was the northerly portion of the Mayfield Yard, and the original condition of the cars brought to rest here can by seen on Pages 91 and 116 of “New York Ontario & Western in Color.” Visible in this image of the very decrepit OB Postal Car is the rooftop sheet metal heat exchanger shield for the Baker heater that was installed in March of 1948. In order to preserve a capability for l.c.l. service on freights, and to provide car heating for agents and company riders after the demise of steam engines that had previously supplied steam for the heating coils within, Baker Heaters were installed in a number of the remaining Postal Cars and baggage cars. Baker Heaters were coal or oil fired stoves with heat exchangers that piped heat to the car through piping previously connected only to the steam lines beneath the car floor. Many later photos of freight trains on the O&W show Steel Postal Cars or Steel Baggage Cars either at the head or tail ends of the consists protecting this tiny capability to handle package or small lot freight. The steel postal and baggage cars, along with several other remaining head end cars were sold to John Baumann in 1955. these cars were used to store rags and scrap paper and, as the once vacant yard area came to be overgrown the O&W cars dragged in were allowed to rot, along with their contents. Much of the former Baumann yard was cleaned out during the summer of 2003, and it was reported that the O&W cars there had finally met their respective ends. As of April 2006, though much of the Baumann yard had indeed been emptied………..these few sad remnants of the O&W remained in the again slowly reforesting former rail yard. Image by Underground Miners, Used with permission of Chris

Gold or Dulux……….Imitation Gold to some……….and then “long” or initials on the letterboards; — the O&W did all of them. To bring HO scale passenger car lettering to the present, my own “lifetime supply” of passenger car decal sets is nearly exhausted. Having decided long ago, after an initial flush of success with O&W Diesel decal sets that I did not want to be in the decal business, so I’d kept nearly the entirety of my own limited run for personal use. Since my artwork is from another, nearly Stone Age, era before such things as we take for granted in the form of PhotoShop, Corel Draw, along with immense resources of the Internet, such as Fonts.com for download, were available I had no desire to update artwork or re-engage commercial production. Fortunately for O&W modelers, other do aspire to that. Not only are there the Bethlehem Car Works gold decal sets, but OWRHS member Al Seebach has now produced O&W passenger car lettering decal sets in Dulux. Those are sold through Al’s Old & Weary Car Shops………and we are to benefit from these continuing efforts of both current suppliers………………………………. Mal Houck

Questions or comments? Please e-mail at indian640@aol.com

This layout appeared in the February 1999 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman (pages 75-77) under the title “A Layout In Almost No Space” – Serious modeling on the wall of an office, By Don Spiro.

I first started cultivating the idea of doing a bookshelf model railway after seeing several “hanging” or shelf type layouts in area restaurants and one particular wall track system at the Matterhorn Nursery in Pomona NY. I still had one big problem as I was not really into the hobby and still had no idea where I would do this even if I was. I remember picking up a copy of a Garden railway magazine and seeing an ad for the wall track system and gave them a call thinking boy this will be easy and fairly inexpensive to do when and if I am ready. Was I surprised! It was something like $35 a foot for each section, albeit it was oak, but I had to cover a 48′ diameter!! So nevertheless the idea stayed with me but it was put on hold for awhile.

I was still not convinced that modeling was for me even though I had a brief introduction to the hobby in N scale thanks to Santa Claus. Also my good friend Mike Murray had the most awesome N scale layout I had ever seen. He and his father built it in nothing of a space but this layout was the most action packed piece of modeling I had ever seen.

There was also the question of what scale would I model. Through my involvement with the Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society, and after seeing the countless fine custom models by the Old & Weary Car Shop and Branchline Trains. I was finally convinced that HO would be the scale for me, as I felt it offered the most realistic modeling at a reasonable price. As mentioned in Don Spiro’s RMC article (which was done about my future layout) “A layout in almost no space”, others including John Pavelchak and Bob Mohowski made me take a look at modeling from a prototypical perspective, and it finally occurred to me that I could bring together my love for history and the O&W through modeling, thus the fuse was lit.

I finally decided I was going to do this in Sept. of 1998 and made arrangements with my wife Maureen, to secure the second bedroom of our apartment. I still had to figure out how this was going to happen without it costing me a small fortune, but after a few days of crunching ideas I realized that all of the framework could be reproduced with pine shelving and wood shelf brackets. So off to Home Depot I went, and went… and went.. and over the course of about a week I had the framework up. The most challenging part of this entire layer was calculating the radius’ and figuring out how to attach them. As you can see in some of the photos they were separate plywood triangles attached using mending plates. I made them a bit oversized so that I could create the trestle, tunnel and station scenes. Next came the Owens Corning 1″ foam insulation board which I attached using liquid nails and carved out the face of it using various tools of destruction including a 6″ razor knife and a serrated steak knife that my friend John “borrowed” from a local eatery.

Track laying took the most time as had to to most of this while up on a 3′ ladder with my head bent against the ceiling and stabbing myself in the fingers with rail joiners, an exacto knife and hot solder. After that it was pretty much smooth sailing and the fun stuff for me; the scenery, structures and paint. I tried to represent the O&W as much as possible although most of what you see is not modeled after any specific area of the O&W. I just tried to give it as much flavor of the Old Woman as possible. The trestle you see in one of the photos was inspired by the Cadosia Trestle and other scenery and structures are representative of my favorite parts of the Old Woman which is the Sullivan County area.