~G4
19 Years old, modeling the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and Cascade Railroad of Western Washington in 1927 in 6X6 feet.
Welcome !!
Ya you're basically right on target. In the olden times most model railroaders had free-lance (i.e. "made up") model railroads, and many went so far as creating schedules, timetables, rulebooks, etc. and as part of that made passes mimicking the real passes railroads gave to employees, clergy, etc. I suspect the practice might tie in to Al Kalmbach, who was a professional printer before staring Model Railroader magazine. I know he printed up a lot of stuff for his Great Gulch RR.
Some folks used to trade them by mail and see how many they could collect. 40 years ago in MR it was common to see a letter to the editor or something similar from someone offering to trade passes - you send me one of yours, and I'll send one of mine back to you.
wjstix Welcome !! Ya you're basically right on target. In the olden times most model railroaders had free-lance (i.e. "made up") model railroads, and many went so far as creating schedules, timetables, rulebooks, etc. and as part of that made passes mimicking the real passes railroads gave to employees, clergy, etc. I suspect the practice might tie in to Al Kalmbach, who was a professional printer before staring Model Railroader magazine. I know he printed up a lot of stuff for his Great Gulch RR. Some folks used to trade them by mail and see how many they could collect. 40 years ago in MR it was common to see a letter to the editor or something similar from someone offering to trade passes - you send me one of yours, and I'll send one of mine back to you.
I still have my collection of Passes from those "olden times" of the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Sheldon
I have a small collection (3-inch stack) of model railroad passes from the 1960s. The three most important to me are:
Pass no. 995 from Whitney Towers's (Los Angeles) Alturas and Lone Pine R.R.
Pass no. 36 from Louis Fossa's (Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia) La Grande & Silver Springs R.R.
Hobo Courtesy Card no. 595 (good until too dirty to be recognized) from H.R. Porter's (Louisville, Kentucky) L & N R.R.
I still have a bunch of passes from my long-defunct railroad available for exchange. Magazines used to have a pass exchange listings in their classified sections. Listings were free!
Mark
Nowadays electronic passes are more common. You can see my fledgling collection (it's three days old!) and request your own pass here.
I started exchanging model railroad passes as a teenage model railroader in the late 1950's. It was a real thrill to see my pass listed in RMC's monthly column several times, and to get letters with passes from all over the world. Many had info on their layouts, and a personal message. I still have all of the passes I collected, numbering over a thousand. I still get one in the mail once in a while, from people who have passed along my name to other pass exchangers. It is/was a great mini hobby within a hobby!
I didn't realise until I got back into the hobby over 20 years ago that in my collection was a pass from John Allen, of the famous Gorre and Daphetid Railroad. I guess at the time it was just another pass for my collection.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
hey, the railroad gave me a pass years ago and then they cut all the passenger trains off. big deal.
grizlump
There're two ways to exchange passes, via snail mail or via internet.
I do both and you scan ee my collection of e-rail passes. But exchanging passes via mail is interesting. Often you get a letter from the friend. I have a file with it and sometimes I look again through them.
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
Gosh Almighty! Those Internet passes are pieces of junk! I want a genuine signature with ink!
yeah, I have a collection, still mounted in display cases in the railroad room. In those days, my layout was the freelanced Mojave Western and I sent passess all over the world in exchange.
My pride and joy is a collection of Santa Fe passes dating back to the 60's when I was working for Santa Fe in Topeka helping to design and install the first mainframe computers. I did a lot of traveling for the Santa Fe and had a "permanent" pass which let me ride all the ATSF passenger trains and also on some foreign roads.
Bob
To get a pass is simple, send you pass in a letter and you will get mine. Address
Hmmmm! The "OLDEN TIMES?!!
Some of us (older guys) still have "Free-lanced Prototype" railroads and, as such, have developed classes for locomotives, numbering systems for motive power and rolling stock, generate route maps, timetables, forms, write a history, etc. just like the prototype. It's what you do when you have Time, No Space and Very Little Money but want to do more than just read magazines and build rolling stock kits, pack them up, put them away and then build another one.
The kool thing is that after twenty years, now that I have Time, Space and (some) Money and a rather substantial fleet of rolling stock and more than a couple kit-bashed structures (with interiors) that I've built over the years, plus 9 pairs of brass Camelbacks (that were part of "The Plan",) plus a couple of connecting road passenger power (for passenger trains that terminate in Lehighton, PA,) the Lehigh Susquehanna & Western has been with me for so long it feels like a "real" railroad (stuck in 1936.) When construction gets beyond benchwork and a few feet of hand-layed track, I'll post some photos ... after I figure out how to do that, of course!
BiL Marsland (P5se Camelback) Lehigh Susquehanna & Western Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Hauler All Camelback Steam Roster!! "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" -- George Orwell, Animal Farm, Chpt. 10
Back in the early 50s, I had an HO model railroad in the basement of the apartment house my folk's rented. I called it the "Quite Dusty and Dirty" RR and at sometime in that decade I had some passed printed up copying one my dad had on the Soo Line RR where he worked. I know I traded passes with other modelers, and at one time I had about 30 of them, but they are lost to the mists of time and a thousand memories.
A friend recently found a bunch of older Model Railroader magazines from the 50s but I could not find any pass exchanges in them. My memories may be flawed and it is possible that my name did not get into one of the exchanges, but I sure seem to think it did.