[WIP] Lionel J-38 Straight Key
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Christopher, you are correct. Same company that made the )-27 model trains. I have my father's prairie locomotive sitting here near my desk and a bunch of cars and track in a box. During WWII, they branched out to help the war time effort.
And yes, the screw eye hadn't been modeled in the first image but it is modeled now. It also needs screw threads.
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" I was gifted with two of them. One is a very rare version in it's military issue box. "
please if you ever get the time, can you take reference photos and post them for us? I'd love to have reference like that in the files...
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superb
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Thank you! I was playing a bit this morning.
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That's a beautiful model! Adding the knurling, really did the trick!
I have that same locomotive but probably a slightly later early 1950's version, as it had pellets to drop down the smokestack and the transformer provided the forward/backward motion. I see that the one you have has a three position switch for that, so your train goes sidewards?
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Thanks. Threads are next, I guess.
The switch on the loco is really a 2-position thing. As I remember, it was always a little tricky to get it working correctly.
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Show us the logo Dave, I have a huge bunch of fonts.
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Thanks baz. The logo is just the Lionel L.
The font I need is the one used for labels on the base. You can see it in these photos.
I think it was a standard font specified by the US Army Signal Corps or maybe the US Government during WWII.
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[quote="Dave R"]
The font I need is the one used for labels on the base.Dave isn't it just one of the Tecnic fonts?
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@cjryan said:
Dave isn't it just one of the Tecnic fonts?
Not sure. The fonts I found didn't match it.
I just did another search. Found one called Technic that is close but the 3 is wrong. Might be able to cheat it with a modified 8. Thanks.
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Sorry Dave, I hastily typed that in, Technic was what I meant. The "E" is a little different also, but close.
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No worries. That's as close as I've been able to come, too. i've been looking for some document that would list standards like this from that time. I'm sure there was something.
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"Futura" maybe ?
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@tuna1957 said:
"Futura" maybe ?
Maybe. I'll check it out.
I went ahead and used Technic but modified the E and the 3. Might call it close enough for government work.
Now to create the Lionel L logo. I was hoping to find a decent BMP or other image to use but I think I'll be drawing it manually. Not a big deal, though.
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Dave,
There must be 10,000 sans-serif type faces, and after a while they all begin to look alike. My best guess is the type face on the straight key is called News Gothic. My second-best guess is Futura. You can look up both (along with the other 9,998) on a site called fonts.com. It's also possible that Lionel created its own lettering for the straight key--something done by an underpaid draftsman using his Leroy lettering templates. Regardless, the font you chose looks pretty close to the orginal--definitely close enough for gummint work, as you said.
Best,
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Thanks David! News Gothic could be it. The font/type face appears to have been available in the time period. I had thought about but rejected the Leroy lettering sets based on the 3 but you could be right. At the time, other companies manufactured the key and other devices that use the same lettering. I remember some shortwave receivers and a direction finder receiver that I was given when I was about Ian's age. They had seen action in WWII. They had the same or nearly the same lettering on them. (I wish I still had them but they got passed on being too heavy to move.)
I guess I'll leave the labeling as it is on the key now, though. Your clues led me to find a set of fonts created from the Leroy lettering guides. My next overly detailed model might be the scriber and of course I'd need to model the templates.
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