Digital BW, The Print

I am a relative newbie to b&w printing.  My problem/challenge is a
follows.  I have many old streetcar b&w negatives (116s and 3x5s) from
the 20s onwards.  I'd like to make nice prints from them but can't
seem to get good digital copies.  The images are fine (usually sharp),
albeit often lacking in contrast ... I'm using an epson perfection
4870 photo scanner and corel paint shop pro X for image editing.  I
use the default settings on my scanner to do an initial edit. From
there I open the files in PSP and try, often unsuccessfully, to give
the images a bit more "pop."  My first step is to adjust the levels
... however I'm not sure how to interpret the historigrams apart from
looking for values at both ends ... many historigrams are like an
oscillating curve.  From there, well, as I say, I end up trying a lot
of different things but am never really satisfied.  The images almost
always look flat.  Any suggerstions, even modest ones will be
apprecaited, on where to start?
Thanks
R.A. Paterson