The year is 1925.....

[howmus]

The year is 1925......... What would Railroads in the Northeast US have used for signage and signals at grade crossings? Also, I will be scratch building some cars from that period and need to know what type(s) of air braking equipment was used commonly during that time period. Thank you in advance!

[Anonymous]

1925. Well, assuming you are operating rural New York state with small cities, as I am. A lot of grade crossings would have nothing more than wooden crossbucks, (railXroad CrosXsing ) if that.

Around Jamestown today, many grade crossing are still protected by only crossbucks that were recently placed. Crossings at switching yards in this area around 1925 had to be guarded by conductors or brakemen.

My father (born in 1937) remembers some liftinging arm crossing gates, this would be during and after WWII. He had a cousin who was killed on the NYC main in Ripley (45 miles from here) while driving a snowplow. The crossing gate didn't do him much good. I'm betting the earliest forms came in only FDR took office in 1933.

I'm slowly gathering the same information to model the Erie through Jamestown in the mid-1930s.

By far, the best source of information will be the local historical society for the area which you are modeling. Old photographs of the area can usually be found there and sometimes good descriptions of an area around a depot, station or switching yard.

Also be on the lookout for period newspaper accounts of train-truck, train-pedestrian accidents. The descriptive and flowery style of the times will probably include the whole gamut of may have gone wrong. A mention of safety devices used, unavailable or those in effect but unheeded are great fodder for the reading public and modelers.

Hope this helps. Feel free to e-mail. I'd like to hear more of what you find out. It will certainly help me.

SMS

[howmus]

ignatius, you assumed absolutely correctly that this is basically a rural layout set in the Finger Lakes Region of NY in 1925. I was thinking that most crossings would have the crossbucks. I spent a day at the Ontario County Historical Society a couple of years ago researching the yard and the Lisk Plant in Canandaigua. Guess I should go up and spend another day there. Thank you much for the information. Very helpful.

I am modeling a fictional Railroad called the Seneca Lake, Ontario, & Western, call letters S. L. O. & W. Been working on it off and on for 25 years....... ???

[dehusman]

Both K, KD and AB brake systems were in use I believe. All cars had air brakes, they were required in 1906 and standard ladder/grabiron arrangements were required in 1911. There would be very few if any wood underframe cars, virtually all would have at least a steel underframe, although superstructures of cars would be wood or composite construction. Hoppers were commonly all steel by then. The Athearn composite hoppers are NOT accurate for 1925, they are 1941 era cars. Any design labeled "USRA" is good.
Go to the Westerfield website (the resin car maker) he specializes in that era and you can get some good info from there.

Dave H.

Dave H.

[Anonymous]

I stand corrected on air brakes and I've learned something.

[orsonroy]

KD brakes were the most commonly used, but "richer" roads had started adding AB brakes. Dreadnaught ends were JUST starting to be added to a few cars. The most common ends were steel 7/7 thin ribs (not the 5/5/5 ribs as on the USRA cars). Most of the boxcar fleet was made up of 36-foot double sheathed cars, but there were large fleets of low steel boxcars being cranked out in amazing numbers (the NYC 1916 steel cars and PRR X29 were made in the tens of thousands!). With the exception of a very few oddballs (D&H and Southern Seleys, and NKP composite twins), ALL hoppers were steel. Triple and quad hoppers were starting to appear in largeish numbers, but mostly on the Pennsy. Offset twins (like the Athearn cars) were built starting in the late 1920s (surprisingly, the largest fleet initially was on the IC). About 2/3 of the national gondola fleet was all steel. Virtually all stock cars were under 40 feet long.

As for grade crossing protection, it's a crapshoot. Most rural crossings would have either nothing (surprisingly for us), or a simple crossbuck. Crossbucks came in three main styles: diamond, X and "squashed X". Up north, the "standard" X seems to have been the LEAST common style. In busier urban areas, a manned crossing shack with manual gates would have been common. Most of these shacks were NOT elevated (like with the Atlas model). There were some automatic crossing signals (I've got 1928 NYC plans for adding them to towns in central Illinois), but they were reserved for large cities with a reliable electric grid connection. Usually, ONE crossing signal was added to the CENTER of the street! Automatic gates were around, but rare as well.

Probably THE single best resource for this sort of data, either on or offline, is the NEB&W website. It's a pay site, but for $7 a month, you get MUCH more information than you would if you subscribed to EVERY modeling magazine out there!
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu

[wjstix]

Assuming the NEB&W site has the stuff collected by John Nehrich, it should have a lot of information. However I have the first copy of the big notebook they put out on historical info, it was good but frankly a lot of little errors showed up in there, always wondered if it was fixed in later editions. (Like for example in the teens-twenties the first "stop and go" signs were hand operated by a cop at the intersection. He showed a picture of one of these but said he had no idea how it was operated.)

[orsonroy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by wjstix

Assuming the NEB&W site has the stuff collected by John Nehrich, it should have a lot of information. However I have the first copy of the big notebook they put out on historical info, it was good but frankly a lot of little errors showed up in there, always wondered if it was fixed in later editions. (Like for example in the teens-twenties the first "stop and go" signs were hand operated by a cop at the intersection. He showed a picture of one of these but said he had no idea how it was operated.)

The NEB&W site is the digital incarnation of the data compiled by John Nehrich (but not written exclusively by him, as the NEB&W is a pretty large and old club). They've stopped publishing hardcopies of their data books, preferring to post everything online. One added advantage to this is that corrections are made MUCH faster, and everything is referenced and illustrated much better than on their old binder-bound volumes.

[balearic]

The Pennsy used oval RR crossing signs along the Elmira Branch, at least in northern PA; I'm not sure if they used them in NY or not. Pics of them can be found in Don Ball's Pennsylvania Railroad 1940s - 1950s (pp. 120, 122).

Selley manufactures various railroad crossing signs that you can probably use for your layout.