Found this today on E-bay. I submitted a question to the seller asking how he determined the age and railroad. Thoughts?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kansas-City-Sou ... 1e88916bd6

Seems priced a little high for its condition.

I got my bell from Brosamer's Bells

Randy -

Most loco bells will go in the $600-1200 range unless there is absolute provenance established (and it is in good condition with the cradle).

Other than a bill of sale from the RR, or the bell has the name cast in (Santa Fe had on their presentation bells had the SF cross w/circle casting attached to the bell), the only other way is to see if there is one or more numbers stamped on it. These were probably made when the loco was shopped & the # was stamped on the bell so it would be returned to the proper loco after shopping. Some bells had multiple #s.

No numbers or other identification = generic bell.

There were other RR's in KC as you well know.

The guy seems to be fishing for a price too.

Oh yeah - it's about 200# & needs to be crated & freighted. The last time I got a bell, I had help & a certain '85 Chevy pickup truck to go up to Westfield MA for a B&M mogul bell for $300. It landed up in the Station.

This bell looks very much like one that I had for years. Mine was supposed to have come from the CRRofNJ. Yes, the price is very high and bells can be very hard to sell because of the weight and shipping costs. I finally sold mine and was happy to see it go. The only bell that I would like to have in my collection would be an original PRR early style bell. They are difficult to find and were reproduced many years ago by Geisler Engineering. I am just staying with builder's and number plates at this point in my life!

I'm not looking to purchase it myself. It's a bit outside my normal KCS collecting realm. It caught my attention, as you don't see KCS artifacts like that very often, if at all. I am going to pass the info on to KCS Historical Society and see if they want to mess with it.

I bought this bell for $1300 about 10 years ago in Pittsburg, Ks. at a railroadiana collectors estate auction. There were 3 bells in this collection, this being the largest of the 3. The other two went for $3,000 and $4,500 apiece!

All this railroadiana was in a small building during the sale... I couldn't see the bells while the bidding was in progress, the crowd was soooo packed in there. I didn't know which one I was bidding on, I just bid til I got one. Came away with one of the larger red MKT railroad porcelain heralds, too.

No telling what RR it belonged to, but just because it's from P'burg (a KCS town) doesn't mean it's KCS, as you know.


I mounted it on a big block of stone out in my front yard. I recently found an even bigger block and plan on transferring it to that piece.

I guess the moral of my story is the things are worth whatever you can get out of them.

Pittsburg, KS was indeed a railroad town. Mr. Stilwell's railroad was originally named the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf Railroad and it came to Pittsburg in 1893. KCS did their locomotive and car work there from 1896 until 1958, when the Deramus facility was opened in Shreveport. The Pittsburg facility employed around 1,200 people at its peak. There were three other railroads that ran through Pittsburg as well. They were the MOP, ATSF, and Frisco. Pittsburg was also the site at which most of KCS's steam locomotives were scrapped.

I knew the owner of that bell, and his family, but I didn't go to the auction. That is a Baldwin bell, I have two like it, one is a Santa Fe presentation with the circle cross emblem, and it is stamped "1873" in several places, the other is from UPRR. Most Baldwin bells have the classification number for the type of loco stamped down into the top of the stem under the washer, but some were obliterated by shop people trying to pound it down through the hole in the yoke.