Re: PC: "Speed Lettering"

[Mester123@xxxxxxx]

Hi everyone,

I just noticed a term used about the PC station signs.  "Speed lettering" is
the term.  Very interesting!  I'm supposing that this is reffering to the
slanted shape of the letters.  If so, this style, has come back into play on
the Metro-North Railroad which operates the same commuter lines that PC
operated outside of New York City.  Penn Central had a region for it (it was
the Metropolitan Region), and now the New York Metropolitan Transportation
Authority has a railroad for it, the Metro-North RR.  To me, "Metropolitan
Region" is a more proffesional railroad like name than "Metro-North Railroad"
but it does beat "Tri-rail."

Well anyway, Metro-North Railroad uses the speed lettering style at its
stations just as PC did.  When Conrail had taken over the commuter operations
from Penn Central in 1976, the slanted style became history and the regular
block lettering came back, only with all the letters of the station name lower
case but the first letter which was of course upper case.   Several of these
signs still exist on the Metro-North RR.  One is at Mt. Pleasant, NY on the
Harlem Line, and the other is at North White Plains, NY also on the Harlem
Line.  

So history has repeated itself as speed lettering once again exists at former
PC commuter stations on the old PC Harlem, Hudson, and New Haven Lines
formerly the NYC Harlem and Hudson Divisions and the old New Haven Railroad.

Did anyone post anything by the way on February 1?  It did make 30 years since
PC was originally created.  I'm sure for former NYC and PRR employees it made
30 years since the worst mistake on the face of the earth occured.  We all
know to them what that is!

John W.