I came across a bunch of Industrial Brownhoist wood patterns yesterday on eBay . They are from their plant foundry in Bay City Michigan . They are amazing. I recognized the long manual control levers for IRMs C&WI 1906 100 ton steam Industrial wrecker. Also u-joint patterns for the diesel powered mechanical drive monitor cab locomotive cranes also manufactured there . Also bearing caps ,latches, rollers, pins ,etc. I would like to see all of these patterns kept together at IRM or another appropriate historical organization, though I do have immediate storage space in our RPO sling and rigging car.If these patterns where from Alco, Baldwin or Lima ,people would be jumping through hoops to get this stuff. I feel I should make an offer for the whole lot but then again ,are they really significant and/or historically important ? At least they are one of a kind and not like saving a duplicate ALCO or EMD locomotive with different paint jobs .

Mark

Technology is changing so fast. How useful really are these patterns? If you need to fabricate a part, will you still cast it, or will you fabricate it from solid? And then there is 3D printing.

I am of the opinion that any wood patterns for anything steam/railroad related should be saved. You will never see the likes of these again and what a great story could be told using them, especially if you have the real item to compare them to.

Yes you can make patterns any number of new ways today, but real wood patterns made by craftsman from "back in the day" are something to treasure.

I vote for saving the patterns. When one of our local foundries closed they brought in a stump grinder and dumped all of the patterns in. The county museum at Bay City has a huge amount of material from Industrial Brownhoist but it is not cataloged and unavailable for research. Anything that can be saved without risking your operation should be.

Wood patterns are often described as art. Either preserve them or offer them to an industrial preservation group. The subject matter alone is fast becoming a memory.

My point is, do you have the storage space for all this? We don't. We can barely keep up with the inventory of actual spare parts. Unless it is a pattern for some consumable part, like a bearing, we don't have the space to store it. More often, the parts I see us making, and in photos from Strasburg, etc., are cut from solid, excepting maybe injectors.

Hey Steven ,

Storage space is no problem. Money , maybe , but I usually do ok there , ssooo after checking out the Bay City County Historical Museum with no patterns in there collection ,I've decided to give it my best at acquiring some if not all of these very significant Industrial Brownhoist foundry patterns. After all, we, at IRM do have 4 IBH machines. An 100 ton steam wrecker , 30 ton DE Monitor Cab locomotive crane, 1929 C&NW Model no. 2 steam pile driver with a tender and a T.M.E.R.& L.CO. electrically-operated street railway crane . We'll see what happens .

Mark Secco
Crane Safety And Training
Illinois Railway Museum

There is another seller (four_bill) with some IB patterns - https://www.ebay.com/sch/four_bill/m.ht ... 7675.l2562.

There's also a Glover locomotive driver pattern up for sale @ http://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-VINTAGE ... SwJq1ZZpS1 if anyone's interested in that. I recall there was a thread on Glover and southern builders a while back.

Hey G ,

You are correct on the other seller. I have contacted both sellers and so far one has agreed to negotiate with me. I'm still waiting for a return call from the other though . For 2 hours worth of work it's going pretty good .
My views are, and always have been in the same direction as expressed here by Sandiepaul , JohnT , Richard Glueck and others.
Thank You.

Mark

I think that the current limitations of size make 3D printing problematic. Some of the castings for steam machinery are truly massive requiring huge patterns. Whether made by hand the traditional way or made of many smaller printed parts, there is still an art to pattern making, especially for complex cored patterns.

Mark,
If want save the patterns....save the patterns! Who cares what the popular opinion is.
It's not like you are squandering money from an group that needs it for other things.
The "Cool" stuff gets the attention, money and manpower.
The odd, broken, big, and unpopular stuff needs champions too.
OK, rant over, before I get really cranked up......

Grumpy Jensen

That's GLOVER MACHINE WORKS. Gloversville is someplace in New York, not Marietta, GA. Given the pattern warehouses were triaged for the Kennesaw museum (by me during an ice storm) to assure the locomotive patterns didn't get lost, I'm kind of wondering how this one got away.

Yes, Dave. Correction made. It was wayyyy past nap time....

Thanks Grumpy, well said.
I'll shortly be heading out to have a look-see at the stuff .

Mark.