ashtrays

[anonymous]

I picked up an ashtray with the buzzsaw in front of an eagle, not the screaming eagle. Any idea how old the ashtray is?

[Charles Duckworth]

Can you post a photo this would help identify it

[David Boeschen]

I bought one a few years ago at one of those modeling meets in Houston. It’s glass and has the buzzsaw on it, and the art on the buzzsaw is pretty good, looks proper. Only thing I would note is that similar ashtrays, in various designs and shapes, have turned up on eBay since. I feel confident this one is a fake, since it looks new and unused.

Perhaps there are lounge car or diner photos that might show an actual in-service ashtray. The lounge cars probably had ashtray stands, but there must have been some actual glass or metal ones. Reality check — I’m not sure how often glass ones were used on railroad cars of any type, because of what would happen when one went flying off a table during an emergency brake application.

I do have a couple of real ones that I stole from GM&O and maybe Rock Island, but they’re cardboard with a metallized surface so as to be both fireproof and unbreakable, as well as disposable (and I didn’t feel bad about ripping them off, for that reason). Did MoPac ever use those?

Ron Merrick

[David Boeschen]

I realized I could answer this question. See attached, on one of the diner-coaches (diner-lounges with the lounge section replaced with coach seats).

RG7

[Dave Wehner]

picture of the ashtray

[Bill Pollard]

Blue cobalt ceramic ash trays (most manufactured by Hall China) were standard for years in dining cars and probably the table area of lounge cars. Smoking stands were used in the lounge/parlor end of these cars. The clear ash trays may have appeared in the 1950s or early 1960s, but I haven’t seen any interior photos from that period to verify how or whether they were marked. Most likely those used in the mid-late 1960s were unmarked glass.

Bill Pollard

[attachment=0:oycbq5kx]T&P-ashtray-w.jpg[/attachment:oycbq5kx]

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