"standard" font(s) used by WW&F on publications

[Alex Harvilchuck]

Has anyone ever figured out if there was a "standard" typsetting font that the WW&F used for tickets, timetables, handbills, posters, etc.? If so what is it?

[Bill Reidy]

Steve Piwowarski might have some insights on this, Alex.  He and I had some discussions this summer regarding timetable posters and the like.  I've tried as best I can the last several years to replicate the style of the original WW&F for museum timetable posters using desktop publishing, but the fonts popular in the late nineteenth century differ from those readily available today.  And as Steve noted, a digital printout today does not match the look and feel of the product of a nineteenth century printing press.

Steve and Annie recently took a look at the 1888 printing press in use at the Windsor fairgrounds, mentioned in this thread.

[Bob Holmes]

I would be surprised if a relatively low-budget operation such as the WW&F had "standards" for printing fonts.  I would think we would want to use several different fonts depending on what we're doing, especially to try to achieve historical accuracy over different time periods.  Example, posters advertising specific events...

We of course could consider a "standard" font for modern communications such as Facebook, etc.

[Alex Harvilchuck]

This document ...

https://www.facebook.com/WWFRailway/posts/10155020457491871

the top two lines and most of the rest look like Clarendon. Especially because of the tail on the lowercase "y" and a few other bits. Besley Clarendon seems to be the closest variant font since the tail of the lowercase "y" is tighter to the stem than a lot of the other variants. It is also an 1845 font and was used extensively with railroads....

The only problem is the "IN EFFECT NOVEMBER 11, 1907" looks like a second typeface. A weird tail on the "N"...

[Alex Harvilchuck]

So I sent the image off to some font geeks to chew on for a while ...

[James Patten]

Baskerville Old Face is relatively close to it.  I would use that back when I did the public timetables.

[Ed Lecuyer]

I'm not sure if Bill would appreciate being referred to as Old Face...

[Bill Baskerville]

Well, Bill is fairly old.... oh, that's me.....  I, however, always like the use of Baskerville font. 

Jason put me on to a railroad font that I have used for a few forms that I created for tracking track maintenance.  It is IFC Railroad font.  The one I found only has upper case letters.  If anyone finds one that also contains lower case letters I would be interested.

BIll

[Jason M Lamontagne]

IFC Railroad font reasonable matches a promotional pamphlet that the W&Q put out in the 1880’s.  Full of the grandness of building to Quebec.

It doesn’t come standard on MS Word, but several of the font sites have it for free.  Now I get lovely emails from those font sites several times a week...

See ya
Jason

[Jeff Schumaker]

"Free" websites are like stray cats. You "feed" one, pretty soon there are a dozen at your door.

Jeff S.

[Mike the Choochoo Nix]

The fact is the fonts were most likely what the printer had on hand. You would probably find the same fonts in work by the same printer done at that time. I have also heard of creating your own fonts on your computer.
Mike Nix