* A SP&S logo, cut from a Burlington Northern RS-3 (still in SP&S paint) being scrapped in Washington State: $20.
* A Pullman silver platter at an antique mall (!) in Denver: $5.
• A CPR Coleman lantern at an Alberta antique store: $1 (and that's Canadian money to boot!)
Kevin

> The series about the use of locomotive bells
> as church bells was quite interesting. A
> local church here in my community just
> placed a locomotive bell outside in a sign
> display. It is complete with cradle, but
> hung upside down.

> Question: Anyone care to tell us about
> locomtive artifacts they might have picked
> up in garage sales, church fairs, or
> abandoned as roadside refuse? I'm sure some
> of our readers have number plates, builders
> plates, whistles, bells, and headlights,
> that were simply considered junk by some
> steam lovers heirs.

If we are speaking of antique malls getting away from garage sales then I have a great find. Had a call from a friend who told me to go to this antique store that they had a picture of a train I would like. Sure 'nuff there was a picture of a train only it was an original Baldwin produced from the builders photo in a baldwin locomotive works marked frame of the AT&SF 3751. It turned out that this was the six foot long photo presented to Santa Fe by Baldwin with the delivery of the engine. Some many years after dieselization the photo was naturally out of favor and removed from some corporate office. I don't know what the path was that this photo found its way to this southern California antique shop but I grabbed it for 100 dollars.

> The series about the use of locomotive bells
> as church bells was quite interesting. A
> local church here in my community just
> placed a locomotive bell outside in a sign
> display. It is complete with cradle, but
> hung upside down.

> Question: Anyone care to tell us about
> locomtive artifacts they might have picked
> up in garage sales, church fairs, or
> abandoned as roadside refuse? I'm sure some
> of our readers have number plates, builders
> plates, whistles, bells, and headlights,
> that were simply considered junk by some
> steam lovers heirs.
Great Thread!!! Not a garage sale find, but a freebee. A number of years ago I was a new member of a Modle Railroad Club in Indiana. I had a pile of old MR's, and offered them to the club in exchance for a 1947 CYC that was in a big box of books. The club members told me they weren't interested in the MR's, buttopld me to take the whole box of books. Came to find out that the box was one of several that a local RR widow had given to the club, and the rest of the members had "picked them over".
Upon taking the box home, I found a couple of 1950's era Safety Awards (PRR), the indicated CYC plus 2 others, Operating Manuals for PRR Sharks (both psgr and frt) and a wide variety of other early PRR Diesel power, a 1929 Boiler Inspector's Handbook, and the unexpected prize, THe PRR's Publication of the "LOCOMOTIVE TESTS AND EXHIBITS, PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD SYSTEM, LOUISANA PURCHASE EXHIBITION, 1904"!
If you only get lucky once in life, I guess I've had my turn!

Anyone else ever see one of the above?

Keep 'em betweem the rails

Ken Breher

Breher1257@aol.com

n/m

Wilmington & Western RR
sethajackson@hotmail.com

> n/m
I think I can top that how about 6 or 8 4 1/2 ' and 5 1/2" tube expanders with flaring rolls. FREE for cleaning an old boiler maker shop. Also a set of reamers and tools to install flexie sleeves and some superheater cutters for the ball ends. Not free they made me pay .50 a pound . Rob

PRR sold me my I1sa plate (loco #4528) for $15,shipping included, around 1965. I think it was the last one available.


glueck@maine.edu

20 years ago or so I got a like-new Pyle-National caboose marker light (just one) for $5 at a thrift store. A year or so before that, I found an Alco PA operator's manual at a used book store for $4, which I DIDN'T buy- DOH!

davew833@yahoo.com

Being in the museum business I have been involved with hundreds of acquissions over the years.

My favorite is the menu from the NWP ferry EUREKA. I was sitting at the front dest one day and a guy walks in, I say hello can I help you.

He says no but I can help you! And hands me the menu. One of two known to exist. They were published every month between 1922 and 1941 and there are only two! That is a find and a half!

Ted Miles

ted_miles@nps.gov

Along those same lines ... not many of these floating around.

http://206.103.49.193/odds/oh/htm/cswc51.htm
lamontdc@adelphia.net

Sad but true, a lot of what really amounted to rail preservation in the long run amounted to petty or grand larcency at the time.

I can tell tales of climbing through shimmied-open windows and battered doors to "rescue" timetables, signs, and paperwork from railroad stations before the arsonists got to them; of pilfering locomotive parts from scraplines, many of which went to museums later (shoulda grabbed those Leslie 5-chimes, though.....); of pilfering mileposts from abandoned trackage in the middle of the night; of trying to "salvage" a PRR position-light signal from a forgotten scrap pile one piece at a time over six months.........

The sad part is, for all my efforts, if you put all the stuff I actually *kept* up for sale at auction, it *might* fetch a couple hundred dollars at best--only because of a few horn parts kept for RRMPa projects to be done in the future. The rest got donated to museums/projects or sold to benefit them.

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

Interestingly, my only related tidbit to this thread was refreshed this Thanksgiving weekend. My dad's friends at the steel mill knew that I liked trains and about fifteen years ago somebody gave my dad a paper shopping bag full of books from a deceased relative. Since I was in college at the time, I stuffed the bag into a corner with my stored model railroad equipment. Well, when I went home to visit this past Thanksgiving, I found the bag and brought it back with me. The original owner of this stuff worked for the PRR and Penn Central, apparently in the car shops. I just went through the stuff last week, and I have some timetables, a Budd disc brake manual, a Vapor steam heat manual, similar car repair manuals and the real prize: A leather bound PRR Operating Manual (No. 2300) for the PRR 5900 to 5901 (EMD E-671), dated 1945. Laying loose inside of this is also a separate small manual for the No. 8ET Locomotive Brake Equipment.

I'd like to scan this stuff in and donate the manual to a proper place. (Does Bennett need a manual for his locomotives?)

JimE

Jim's train pages

Hi all
The Scrap yard in Roanoke Has all sorts of stuff that is railroad and steam related which includes 4 old M and W class Steam Locomotives.
As a side note I saved the cleanout door from and old Keeler Boiler that was used at Washington and Lee University

> I'll bet Virgina Scrap Iron and Metal will
> reveal some interesting stuff once it's
> cleared.


amartin@wlu.edu