Railroadiana Items In Your Collection

Jersey Central Adlake Tender Marker marked CRRofNJ.  Restored from a dented rusty hulk.

@jrose609 posted:

this was my grandad’s. He worked for UP for 48 years.  After my grandfather died, my uncle gave it to me. Someday  I’ll pass down to my eldest

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Jrose609, please reload the image as it is not visible.

@Allegheny posted:

Jrose609, please reload the image as it is not visible.

I think it’s working.  Thanks for the heads up!

WW1 medals presented to employees who served

My first 2 RR lanterns, a gift from my Pappy when I was 10 yrs old.  He said he got them from the town "junk man".

Nice set of CNJ lanterns.

I don't have much, but my son does home restorations and found these tearing out a porch on a fire damaged house built 1875. I'm going to try to find a space to hang them. They are old dimensional lumber actually 1 inch thick not 3/4 like modern lumber. The top one has some soot from the fire, and I doubt they're as old as the house but it's old and cool.

A new one to me this Winter / Spring is our Hutchinson Train Indicator from Lasalle Street station in Chicago. This thing just oozes history and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to add it to our collection. This gate was home to the famous 20th Century Limited, Rock Island Rocket, and host of other high profile trains over the years. We were lucky enough to find a photo of it in 1948. It has been a pleasure to light this up again and enjoy it.

With the exception of a few items of wall-art (prints of some of the masters...like Howard Fogg) I'm not really into "Railroadiana" as a collectable.  That said, I do have this item...

...which embodies both my favorite railroad as well as a pair of treasured friends...long since deceased...Jerry and Terry Drake of Bay City, Michigan.  There might be a few folks who remember Jerry and Terry and their very famous Italian restaurant downtown in that city, O Sole Mio.  But Jerry  was quite the model railroader, incorporating whimsy and humor into his HO layout, The Bent Spaghetti Lines, (the BS Lines, as he declared with a wink!) in a large room as part of their living quarters above the restaurant.  He was a devoted NMRA member, published in many of that organization's periodicals, as I seem to recall.  I have, in fact, two boxcars from NMRA's commemorative series honoring Jerry's BSL; one by Athearn in HO, the other by Weaver in O scale.  One of Jerry's most memorable projects was an HO articulated, a 2-4-6-8.  He also created a complete 'campus' on his layout for Wasamatta U.

Jerry and Terry were special friends, besides incredibly gracious hosts and chefs.  One of the things Jerry liked to do from time to time was invite his railroad buddies to the restaurant on the night the restaurant was closed to the public.  He would make his own version of 'Hobo Stew' in a huge pot in the kitchen, complemented with homemade breads, all of which was, as they say, 'To die for!'.  Of course, going upstairs to run trains was part of the evening's fun.

The cancelled stock certificate is monetarily worthless.  The memories and friendship it represents for me are priceless.

RIP, Terry and Jerry.

KD

New addition to my collection fathers day gift!

Cleaning up my collection, I thought I would add to the list. The "3 Track" sign with glass reflectors was from the CB&Q mainline between Chicago and Aurora - I think it came from a crossing in either Lisle or Naperville. The Suburban announcement sign came from the Chicago Union Station and was used from mid 1940 to late 1950.

RAY

I do not collect Railroadiana.  From time to time though I will stumble onto something.   While cleaning out my parent's papers I stumbled on a Pennsy New York World's Fair Form 2 timetable effective Jan. 31, 1965.

400 switch keys, a bunch of locks, 7 steam engine bells, 30 locomotive whistles, over 100 conductor or presentation lanterns,  2-color globes, about 50 good tall globe lanterns, short globe lanterns, spare globes, RR library, 60 RR & Express wax sealers, a Soo Line 2-8-0 headlight, several builder & number plates, step stools, clocks, marker lamps, rear end markers, O-scale brass models, ticket daters & dies, Signs, etc. & on & on & on.

@locopilot750 posted:

400 switch keys, a bunch of locks, 7 steam engine bells, 30 locomotive whistles, over 100 conductor or presentation lanterns,  2-color globes, about 50 good tall globe lanterns, short globe lanterns, spare globes, RR library, 60 RR & Express wax sealers, a Soo Line 2-8-0 headlight, several builder & number plates, step stools, clocks, marker lamps, rear end markers, O-scale brass models, ticket daters & dies, Signs, etc. & on & on & on.

Awesome! We need to see some pictures.

Some shots of the current train room.

I have one lantern and a swag 'switch lamp' made by the same company that was making lamps for the railroads.  It is my understanding that the shift to commercial decorating was because of a decline in RR business.  I will attach a few photos and here's the website for the story behind it. http://www.railroadiana.org/li...Cat_HandlanFinal.php.   Very nice thread, nice to see other collectors stuff.  Chuck

@NJCJOE posted:

Some shots of the current train room.

You are KILLEN ME JOE!

Oh my ...

Too much Fairbanks Morse stuff to show ..  a few pics ...

Here is part of the collection, I'm trying to quit. Really,  it's easy, I've done it hundreds of times.

@locopilot750 --You certainly have some beautiful lanterns there!

Tom

Here is some B&O stuff.

The chair is a later dining car chair.  Still has the weights on the back legs.  Came from car #1080.

The signal is a dwarf CPL, still operational and has most of its glass lenses.

This box was used to carry food through the trains.  It was repainted by the B&O at sometime in the past.  The original color is the red that is showing through and it is lettered " Baltimore and Ohio  Dining car dept.

Grandfather used it as a kindling box!

I have seen two others and one was also repainted blue and gray without the dome and the other was still red but had cursive lettering.

locopilot750,

Awesome collection. Thanks for sharing.

A Jersey Central mail/ballot box. Not sure where this was used.

A salesman sample of a harp switch stand.

Evening y'all,

I'm still finding stuff my Father collected.  I found two boxes of Southern Railway glassware and ceramics.  I do not know the story behind the 1948 Safety Award.  I hung it in my train room today.

This is a rail pass from when my Dad worked in the Burlington shops in Aurora Illinois. One of my sons found this in a book after he passed 2007.

Railroad Postcards and Harvey Girls

  Picture postcards have been part of the sent/received mail landscape for decades and during the years of railroad passenger travel one could purchase a picture postcard of just about anything railroad at the railroad station. 

  One feature of the Santa Fe railroad stations as well as many of those big Union stations where the Santa Fe called were the Harvey House Dining Halls. At those stations, in addition to railroad pictures, one could also purchase pictures of the associated Harvey houses. 

  From time to time either a postcard with a "Made for Fred Harvey" mark on the back or just a postcard for a particular railroad station would feature, in addition to a picture of the station itself, people coming and going and, once in awhile, the Harvey House staff.  Below are two railroad postcards with this combination of station and Harvey House staff.

Station Arkansas City, Kansas

Detail

  Station Chanute, Kansas

Detail

   The Harvey Houses and the Harvey Girls were an integral part of the Santa Fe railroad for many decades.  If you should be interested in learning more about them I would recommend the book The Harvey Girls.

How did I not see this thread up until now ?

Some amazing collectibles folks !

I have but a few from far flung places ...

From Ukraine , a soviet era pocket signalling light , battery operated with internal lens shade to change colours

A London and North Eastern Railway interior signal lamp from pre-electrification times

And some paperweights ... one from the CNR at the London Exhibition of 1928

And another one I am not sure that would have proudly stood on anyones desk for a while ... A thank you one from the North Eastern Railway  for volunteer service given during the Great National Railway Strike in 1919 ... Basically announcing to the world you kept the rails running while the Union was on strike !

I bought this Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Ry Dietz Vesta online recently.  It looked like it had been in a shed somewhere for 50+ years.  Anyway after I cleaned the dirt off it, I was pleased to see the globe is also marked with BR&P RR, which is curious, as it's the former corporate name that went away in the 1880's reorganization.  Lantern patent date 1925.

That globe etching doesn't seem to be the most professional looking...

Per Wikipedia, the B R & P was bought out by the B & O RR in 1932.

An American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners charger from a meeting of the organization in Baltimore 20 years ago. It's sort of an oddball piece in a larger B&O Blue China collection. And let me clarify, the only private rail cars I own are in O, HO, and G Scale!

Recently purchased a steam locomotive bell. I decided to clean and paint the yoke and cradle. The bell was also cleaned and polished. The bell was sanded with four grades of sandpaper, 220, 320, 500 and 1000. It was then polished with three grades of polishing compound.

Gorgeous restoration on that bell! The finial looks like the condenser from a hydrostatic lubricator.

@NJCJOE posted:

Recently purchased a steam locomotive bell. I decided to clean and paint the yoke and cradle. The bell was also cleaned and polished. The bell was sanded with four grades of sandpaper, 220, 320, 500 and 1000. It was then polished with three grades of polishing compound.

Joe,

  Beautiful! Is that the bell from the PRR B6 that you mentioned earlier? What does it weigh if you know?

Tom

Tom,

No, this is another bell. I still have the B6 bell as well. My guess, it's around 300 lbs.

@smd4 posted:

Gorgeous restoration on that bell! The finial looks like the condenser from a hydrostatic lubricator.

Steve,

You maybe right about that. The finial did not come with the bell. I found it at another vendor's table at the railroadiana show. He didn't know what it is from. It fit the threads on the bell clapper so I decided to add it to the bell for a more finished look. Good eye.

@PRR8976 posted:

What does it weigh if you know?

We moved last year, and I had movers move my bell, down a flight of stairs from the old house, and up a flight of stairs to the new house. They were not happy. 300 lbs. may be about right.

Yeah, I moved mine to the basement piece by piece.

Bells are a pain, with yoke, cradle, bell and clapper, 275-300 lbs is about right. The last ones I've bought, I got them out of the truck with my Cat skid loader and a big tow strap. I set them down in the garage, and that's where they stayed !

Well at least you have some bells, unlike many of us, me included.