Hol wrote:
“Before Dulux, some other yellow-gold paint was used, and before the advent of lettering decals actual gold leaf was used for lettering, or more accurately, gold paste -- powdered gold in a binder with water, applied like paint and then coated with varnish.”
I am not sure that gold wasn’t applied as a stencil paste, but “gold leaf” comes in extremely thin sheets in a book which are picked up with a brush using static electricity and laid down on a tack coat and smoothed dry with a following coat of clear varnish to protect it. The letters are painted as if they were going to be the final color and the gold leaf only adheres to the painted tacky lettering. The gold leaf foil outside the painted areas is wasted.
Much lettering was done with “stencil paste” which was a very stiff paint ponced onto the exposed open surfaces of a stencil laid against the side to be lettered.
BTW, the Meyercord Company in Crystal Lake, IL supplied decals to the Burlington going back to the steam era. In the late sixties I contacted them and they claimed not to have any material in their files. A shame because so far no Burlington stencil drawings have surfaced for Railroad Roman lettering used on locomotives and freight and passenger equipment.
Charlie Vlk