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I have one of the cast highway crossing signs of similar design, cast, with an X – the sign shape itself square with triangle on top. How many different cast signs were made?
Bill Pollard
What is the risk with a really rusted lantern, that the rust remover will leave holes rather than metal?
Bill Pollard
August 17, 2015 at 12:04 am in reply to: Missouri Pacific Planetarium Dome Coach 892 "The Eagle" #7076When the IC had these cars, I am reasonably sure that the roof was painted. Its possible that the metal had been primed or otherwise treated in that application so that it was not possible (or too expensive) to return to bare metal. In any event, its a great looking restoration. I’m glad that they chose to return it to its original colors.
Bill Pollard
I have a set of train order blades from Conway, AR, obtained under similar circumstances. The signal maintainer was dismantling the signal in 1973 after the Conway train order office had moved from the depot downtown to a prefab building on the south edge of town. An official with the maintainer had already retrieved the lamp, and they were getting ready to drop the two blade assemblies onto the brick platform. I asked for and was given the blades, but they could not find a rope to lower the blades down, so they were dropped – breaking the lenses and cracking some of the porcelain on the blade itself. The maintainer later brought two new blades that had been in storage in Morrilton so I did get replacement blades, but had to purchase new lenses. The entire blade was coated porcelain finish… red with white stripe on the front, and all white on the back.
Steve, on the question of the width of the white stripe, I don’t have my blades in front of me, but believe the dimension to be more like 3 or 4 inches wide, not 3/4 inch, if I am reading your post correctly.
There was another, earlier style of blade which was somewhat ribbed at the mounting base, but still porcelain baked on metal – Conway had one of each.
Bill Pollard
Did the Gateman badges also come in gold? I was told that the Gateman badges were also used by those who opened the midway gates and directed passengers to trains at places like Little Rock and Texarkana.
I have a sidebar question about 201-202. I worked the Newport TSE for a number of weeks in 1970 on the school boy brakeman’s extra board. A big part of the 2nd trick job was to drop everything and switch 201 when it arrived in Newport. We would use the road power to switch this train, blocking it for easier delivery to Memphis connections. I wasn’t aware that the crews worked Memphis-Cotter at that time, but I don’t recall anyone else in the cab or on the train when we did this work. Did the through crew go for beans while we did this work, or ??? What would have been the purpose of having our TSE crew handle this blocking work versus having the road crew perform that work — did MP avoid penalty pay for the road crew by this maneuver?
We were generally left alone to do our work, but switching 201 often brought out the trainmaster from his office in the depot to observe or check such things as whether “green” brakemen had a standard watch. All work in the yard was done by hand signals (or lantern signals after dark), but for 201 the TSE conductor would go to the depot to check out a radio pack set which was used to expedite switching. After 201 had departed, we turned the set back in — the thinking among crew members being that if we used it all the time, the company might try to cut a brakeman position from the crew.
This was well before the UP merger, but 201-202 frequently had UP power, often GP-9 B units. At the time, seeing the UP power was quite exotic. Little did we know that we would all too come to detest Armour yellow.
Bill Pollard
Charlie,
Your thought about a separate thread for MP badges (originals) is a good idea. With regard to the silver slotted badges, I am sure that they were used in freight service, but I had always assumed that they were also used in passenger service in the early years before the enameled badges became standard. Have you seen any “true” passenger crewman badges from the pre-1915 era?The September 2007 issue of the Arkansas Railroader contained an article by the late John Mills on MP parlor car service. (See attachment below.)
John had an encyclopedic memory and this parlor car article came out of a lengthy discussion that he and I had earlier that year on Amtrak’s Capitol Limited en route to or from Washington DC. John was spouting numbers faster than I could write them down, and I really encouraged him to get the information written down where it could be published. Fortunately, he produced this document later that year. The Arkansas Railroader publication is defunct, but I feel certain that John’s son would be happy to approve republication of this article in the Eagle. It could be easily expanded with additional information and car assignments to fill in additional data from other parts of the system.
According to the John Mills article, the usual car on Memphis-Hot Springs trains 219-220 was 10613, with 10612 held in stand-by service. Both cars were indeed in Eagle colors.
Bill Pollard
[attachment=0:1oa8yo9e]parlor-cars-Mills-Ark-RRer-9-2007.pdf[/attachment:1oa8yo9e]
Some small milk bottles have also been reproduced. Supposedly one needs to know about the embossed glass markings on the bottom of the bottle to distinguish between legitimate and fake Ben Bush Farms Missouri Pacific milk bottles in the smaller size. Hopefully someone can provide better information to guide those who might want to add one of these to their collection. The larger sizes of milk bottles with the MP logo embossed in the glass are all originals, as far as is known.
Bill Pollard
Solid information from serious dater die collectors would be appreciated. The Cosmo fakes mentioned in the above link are readily identifiable, and of a lesser class than the dies currently being sold. Most of the recent dater dies appearing on Ebay have come from the Egan auction, a massive collection of much railroadiana and several thousand dater dies which was auctioned in the northeast perhaps a year ago. I have been told by several die specialists that the dies from this collection are generally considered legitimate. Having acquired a few myself, I share Charlie’s concern that they are often in “mint” condition, seemingly unused. However, in comparing these with known legitimate dies from the same manufacturer (ones acquired directly from a railroad source) I can detect no variation which would suggest that they are counterfeit. Unfortunately, some of the more obviously mint condition dies from this collection have been those from MoPac and from MP Transportation Co, including dies manufactured for both Cosmo and Centennial daters.
Bill Pollard
I produced a more extensive write-up on the MP fake calendars for the MPHS meeting in Little Rock in 2012. This PDF conversion of that PowerPoint presentation (attached) could provide some guidance for those who are interested in gathering a set of these calendars. The fakes are nice representations of the originals, unless you are buying them at “original calendar” prices.
Bill Pollard
[attachment=0:3awxhie0]Missouri Pacific Card Calendars-sm.pdf[/attachment:3awxhie0]
July 9, 2015 at 1:41 pm in reply to: What’s the first year the original Sunshine Special Plate was made? #6693The railroad initials shown in the logo on the face of the plate, StLIM&S and I&GN, provide some evidence that the plate was produced prior to the consolidation of Iron Mountain and MP, and well before I&GN became I-GN. I have been told that there is another version of this plate which has MP in place of Iron Mountain, but if such exists, I have never seen any photo evidence.
Bill Pollard
In this time period, MP was eager to accommodate larger groups by supplementing the existing food service on “grill coach” trains, so the presence of this car on train 119 could be the result of a group move.
Its a great photo, in any event. A good project for some future Eagle article would be to track the usage of this class of diner-parlor-observation cars on different trains during the time they were used.
Bill Pollard
This looks similar to the car that was used on 219-220 into the mid-1950s or later. Any idea where the photograph was taken?
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