Railroadiana stuff; let's see. Lanterns, switch keys, rule books, timetables, maps, tariffs, uniform insignia, insulators, the usual. I have a lot of PRR stuff that came from a friend of my father's who was a PRR conductor. He had hired out around 1940 and didn't appear to have ever thrown anything away.
My wife's great, great grandfather was a tower operator on the Big Four in Hamilton, OH in the teens and I have his old lantern along with 3 globes, one clear with no logo and a red and a clear, both with the Big Four initials.
When I do dig stuff out and look at it, I tend to spend more time on the maps and tariffs than anything else. I was fortunate to have been working for a large rail shipper at the time of rail deregulation in 1980 and was able to retrieve quite a few boxes of what had become useless tariffs; all stuff that was being thrown out. The mileage tariffs are the most fascinating to look through and normally include a system map for the issuing railroad on the back cover. Some of the ones I rescued from the trash back in the early '80's carried mail department stamps from the 1920's.
Curt
