I don't know who else saw it on Ebay, but there was a framed photograph of BLW Shark #1216 with what appeared to be an original Baldwin Lima Hamilton RF-16 builder's plate #75372. The listed item was pulled; could it have been one of the original stolen plates, or just a copy.
Anyone know ?

Kevin K

When the Sharks were on the Michigan Northern, the owner made up a box of urethane builder's plates (I think he was in the plastics business) and had them in a box in the cab. Someone chalked on the side sill "Builders Plates $20. See engineer" I think some had been applied, and the disappointment when someone took a chisel to them and they shattered! Not saying that this is connected to the eBay posting, but who knows?

Steve

The entire subject of loco builders plates (diesel, in particular) that have been legitimately obtained would be a (very) brief discussion.

Dave

I haven't found that lot listed. Anyone got a link or screen shot?

What I DID find was this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BALWIN-LIMA-HAM ... 1370715259

The 214, an ex-SAL RS12, was sold by the SCL to the Michigan Northern, and then to the Escanaba & Lake Superior in 1983, after the E&LS had bought three others in 1980. When I was there scoping out possible repatriation candidates for southern rail museums in 2001 (while also courting my future wife), 214 was an obvious parts source/cadaver, but still there. The number on the plate matches two lists I have here.

The big/biggest burglary at the E&LS was New year's Weekend 1980, according to the late Jim Boyd.

It's safe to say that unless the seller is a certain E&LS executive, this is a stolen plate.

The Ebay item was #271755114841

Kevin - I also saw the plate and it looked good in the photo. Maybe the seller caught some flack because of the background story on those plates, or maybe he got a very high offer and sold it off ebay. It amazes me what can turn up on ebay, both good and bad!! I miss the days when I used to purchase plates directly from Precision Engineering and the railroads themselves. That was back before some people became very brazen and now they steal bells, whistles, horns and plates!

Let's be completely open-minded about this.

The seller DOES NOT allege that this is the ACTUAL BUILDER'S PLATE. As with a lot of suspicious, potentially fraudulent eBay listings with insufficient information either by ignorance or design, you are left to ASSUME that. It's entirely possible that this is one of the plastic Castolite replicas mentioned earlier.

I have been told that the (rather well known among railfans/preservationists) owner of the Baldwin Sharks is himself a frequent eBay buyer and shopper, and was recently alleged to have been involved in what appeared to be a spectacular "thousand-dollar slide" purchase, which turned out to be a typo, and which led to renegotiated price between seller and buyer.
If he saw this plate and had reason to believe it was the real thing, the police--or the threat of police action--are no doubt involved in shutting down the auction.

It's not entirely impossible--albeit unlikely--that the seller is an innocent stooge in all of this, having found the framed plate in an estate and decided to hawk it while being ignorant of the circumstances surrounding it, and a negotiated return is being brokered. Heck, the thing could even be a plastic replica that the seller thought was real!

I sure am glad that the resident RYPN expert has chimed in again on this subject. Hope that you saw the detailed photos that I saw. It did NOT look like a plastic reproduction in the photos.

I disagree, as I knew of a scrapping place that cut up numerous diesels. A pal of mine lived nearby and for a while in the early 90s, would buy all the plates and number boards off anything that rolled in there. They even let him remove the stuff himself, which is why he got them very cheaply. He made a brisk trade at RR collectible shows for a while on them.
After a while, they got wise to the fact they were practically giving them away and cut him out for another vendor.
But anyway, he'd handled a lot of builder plates, all legit and legal.

The standard price of a builder's plate, number plate, or whistle back in the days of steam scrapping was a bottle of whiskey, box of cigars, or carton of cigarettes handed to either the scrapyard foreman or the torch wielder, according to several collectors from two generations ago. This is provided the items in question even made it that far; many were removed by sentimental or opportunistic railroaders. At least one GG1 plate was "liberated" in the 1960s and presented to a railfan minister in the Wilmington area, according to his son who still owns said plate. These create a "gray area" of legality. I've heard a report of a Conrail shop employee a few decades ago that carried an extra-large lunch pail and a cold chisel, and was supposedly caught and prosecuted.

I've personally cast replica plates, and have owned a few others myself. Sure, the plate in that frame looks real, but so do my replica GG1 plates, until you flip them over and see "REPLICA" where the casting number should be, or pick up the perfect-looking one and realize it's made of type metal and not aluminum.

The issue in this case is not how it looks, however. It's the fact that if it's real, it was either stolen off the loco at some point, and if not it's a replica, and seeing as there have been reports of the railroad actually marketing plastic replicas, the skepticism is warranted. And apparently potential bidders agreed.

And there are also well known instances where original or "authentic" duplicate plates produced with locomotive builders' factory equipment were handed out to valued customers, company executives, and retiring employees. For the 1989 50th anniversary of the FT locomotive Open House at EMD, several sets of accurate bronze replica plates for FT103 were produced and stamped on the factory machinery. Some of these were given as gifts to current and former employees who had assisted EMD to gather and organize the display materials that were shown at the Open House.

PC

There was a discussion on TO about this listing and I can no longer find the discussion. I had some dialog with the seller who was not sure if the plate was metal or not but he thought it was. Those who saw the listing will recall it was framed alongside some photos. Isn't a builder's plate of this type rather heavy? The frame looked a bit flimsy for a real cast metal builder's plate.

The TrainOrders discussion showed up in a Google search for the eBay listing and builder's number:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 4276,d.eXY

When I clicked the link, I got the TrainOrders page saying "Sorry, the message you have requested cannot be found", then a reversion to the category from which it came (Nostalgia and History). It apparently got removed before a single comment could be posted, be it for controversy or content.

If anyone is enterprising enough to go into some "wayback machine" or cache online and find it, be my guest.

As someone whose wife does professional framing of both images and artifacts for a living, I have to concur that there is no way that frame/mat/backboard combination can be holding an original BLW cast plate unless a lot of epoxy, construction adhesive or the like was being used.

Just because the Baldwin 75766 builders plate belongs to a hulk that is property of the Escanaba & Lake Superior, and the seller is not involved with said railroad, this does not mean that the plate is stolen. Let's view the facts...

The locomotive was former SCL, which painted the frame sides of their locomotives yellow. This plate is yellow.

Look at the seller's other items...all former SCL builders plates, painted yellow, in similar condition and wear, from locomotives that do not have any relationship to the E&LS.

#214 was delivered to the E&LS with it's SCL livery painted over. One would expect a plate in such condition to wear, with the possibility of being stolen, to have the paint job of it's locomotive at the time of it's theft.

Assuming the facts that Mr. Boyd stated are correct, the largest theft at the E&LS occured in 1980, when #214 came on property in 1983 already missing plates (according to photographs).

Wouldn't it make since that the plate is part of a collection that was gathered before these SCL locomotives moved on to other lives?

This research took about as long as it would have taken to assume the plate is stolen...

Yes, let's.

There's no mention of a bill of sale or other legal authorization to remove the plates from the SCL or a scrapper. Doesn't much matter which railroad. The only question is whether someone cares enough to raise the issue--and if it was SCL, not any more.

Technically, I can take a set of old crossbucks or even an outdated employee TT from the railroad's scrap pile behind the comp'ny shed. It's still "stolen property" unless someone said "go ahead" or physically handed it to me, or traded it to me for a carton of cigarettes or whatever. I even once had a broken item that was handed to me by an employee, which I repaired, reclaimed as "stolen company property" by another employee (a police agent on a bit of an ego trip) years ago. (And I'm sure that hard hat was tossed right into a trash can as soon as it was returned to base.)