The Cap Badge - A Treasured Railroad Collectible

As he begins his fourth year as chairman of the awards committee, Mark Entrop thanks members for their suggestions. A form in the spring issue of the Newsletter will ask for ideas for the book and article awards for 2006. Four awards, given annually, were announced at the fall meeting of the Lexington Group in Transportation History in Harrisburg, Pa.

For 2005, the 24th year, the recipients were Richard Steinheimer and Jeff Brouws, George W. and Constance M. Hilton Book Award; H. Roger Grant, Gerald M. Best Senior Achievement Award; Greg McDonnell and James P. Shuman, Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award; and Ric Morgan, the David P. Morgan Article Award. Steinheimer and Shirley Burman, his wife, will receive the book award at Winterail in Stockton, Ca.

“We had good participation from the committee in 2005,” Entrop said as he thanked Gregory Ames, vice chairman, and other committee members for a job well done. For 2006, the committee has 15 members; for continuity, five are selected each year to serve three year terms.

The process starts in the spring with the call for nominations for the book and article awards. Books must have been published in the last three years (2005, 2004, 2003); articles, the last two years (2005, 2004). Members

have four to six weeks to send nominations. Books and articles are then sent to three-member subcommittees to review and make a decision. The entire committee nominates and votes for the senior achievement and photography awards. By August, decisions are made and the process of notifying winners is underway.

Entrop, who has worked for Amtrak since 1976 in a variety of corporate and field positions, does not get a vote. “The 2005 recipients reflected a commitment to presenting and preserving railroad history, and making the subject available to younger individuals. I am pleased with the process and the depth of the committee’s efforts.”

Committee members are Mark Aldrich, John J. Atherton, John W. Barriger IV, Kurt R. Bell, Russell C. Davies II, H. Roger Grant, John Gruber, Herbert H. Harwood Jr., Don L. Hofsommer, J. Parker Lamb, Arthur L.

Lloyd, Robert S. McGonigal, George M. Smerk, and Charles P. Zlatkovich. The book subcommittee includes Ames, Bell, and Gruber; the article committee, Grant, Lloyd, and Zlatkovich.

Since the awards program started in 1981, chairmen have included William L. Withuhn, Robert Post, and Bruce Heard.

By J. Parker Lamb

Once again my deepest appreciation to the members whose generosity allowed our Friends Program to continue its success as a strong financial supporter of the entire Society. The 2005 campaign provided a gift to encourage donations, and the response was strong and impressive. Results will be published in the upcoming Railroad History.

For 2006, we are planning a rare and very collectible item for Friends Program supporters. Full details will be in the upcoming RRH. So, stay tuned for February, when the issue will be in your mailbox.

HOW ABOUT A PEEK PREVIEW?

The R&LHS Archives Services office affords members access to the various collections of the Society, as well as articles from virtually every past issue of The Bulletin or Railroad History dating back to 1921. This and future editions of the Newsletter will describe the resources available and how to make use of them. This issue discusses our Locomotive Rosters for individual railroads and Records of Builder’s Construction Numbers for several locomotive manufacturers.

The Locomotive Rosters in our archives were assembled from various sources and generally describe a road’s fleet as of a specific date. Several dates may be available for a particular railroad, but the focus is on the steam era. The rosters generally show each locomotive’s current and previous road number(s), builder, and basic mechanical specifications. In some instances, there is also information on previous owner(s) and disposition. We have relatively few “all-time” rosters, although in some cases comprehensive coverage of a railroad’s motive power can be found in the pages of The Bulletin or Railroad History. The “Index” for The Bulletin/ Railroad History on the R&LHS website at www.rlhs.org identifies these roads.

Records of Builder’s Construction Numbers are available for the Baldwin Locomotive Works and predecessors, the American Locomotive Company and predecessors, Juniata Works of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and a number of other manufacturers. For Baldwin only, there is also an “Index” listing locomotive construction numbers by individual railroad.

A detailed listing of available Locomotive Rosters and Records of Builder’s Construction Numbers may be purchased for $2.00 from R&LHS Archive Services, PO Box 600544, Jacksonville, Florida 32260-0544. Photocopies of rosters and builder’s records may be purchased for 25 cents per page ($5.00 minimum per order).

The R&LHS also has a large collection of locomotive builder’s photographs with mechanical specifications. An example from Baldwin is shown above. Although this collection is not cataloged, inquiries about specific locomotives or roads may be directed to R&LHS Archives Services at the above address.

Hat badges have been my interest for over forty years. It all started in 1963 when I got off a New Haven train coming home from college. The Station Master was at the bottom of the car steps in full uniform including his cap. His badge read NY. NH. &H R.R. STATION MASTER. For some reason I asked him where I could purchase a badge like his. He took me back to his office and gave me one. WOW!

When a passenger boards the train, the first railroad employee they almost always see is wearing a dark blue uniform with an official looking hat. An important part of that hat is the cap badge that generally would give the name or initials of the operating railroad as well as the title of the wearer. Conductor is usually considered the most important title and the badge to collect. A conductor is like the captain of a ship. He’s the boss. Today, it may be she’s the boss too as is the case of Conductor Marilyn who works our Downeaster here in Maine.

Cap badges are sometimes called hat badges, and they originated in the early railroad days. Tom Savio in California has been collecting badges for over forty years too, and he tells me his oldest badge is a Central Pacific of California that dates from 1864. At one time he had a Baltimore City Passenger Railway badge c. 1859. It is the earliest he has seen and would appear to have been excellent trade bait as he no longer has it.

In my own collection a Camden and Amboy CONDUCTOR may be my oldest one and would predate the Civil War and before the C&A became part of the Pennsy. Another early badge was the Nashua, Acton and Boston CONDUCTOR badge that graced the collection for a number of years. The NA&B became part of the Boston and Maine on June 29, 1895.

One of my favorite badges has a story. Soon after moving to Maine in 1971, I joined The 470 Railroad Club in Portland, which allowed me to get to know many Maine Central railroaders. One spring afternoon after arriving home from work, the doorbell rang. At the door was an older gentleman from the MEC’s audit department. He said, “Jerry I have retired from the railroad this afternoon. This badge was in the bottom drawer of my desk for many years, and I know you would like to have it for your collection.” I was overwhelmed at this gift, and that Maine Central BAGGAGE MASTER badge hangs on my badge board to this day. While badges announced the wearers’ title, for many railroads they were also a sense of pride showing off the railroad logo as well. Many readers will remember the PRR “Keystone” on their badges, the NYC blue logo on their badges, and the Santa Fe logo on their badges. One of the most spectacular badges I’ve ever seen belonged to the Minnesota & International, which became part of the Northern Pacific. This CONDUCTOR badge was gold with the title outlined in black enamel with red enamel inside the black outline of each letter. The employee's title was in the middle of the badge with the railroad name in larger letters above the title. At the top of the badge was the outline of a moose with a large rack of antlers. In the antlers was a map of the railroad’s routes. With a cap badge collection that once numbered 687, that badge is the only one I regret parting with. There were others that stand out like the Northern Pacific “Nomad” emblem, the Monon big red emblem, the Southern Pacific sunburst emblem as well as the Missouri Pacific sunburst emblem.

While the CONDUCTOR title always seemed to be the one to acquire for a given railroad, there were also many other titles. Familiar titles on many railroads were TRAINMAN, BRAKEMAN, BAGGAGEMAN, BAGGAGE MASTER, PORTER, TICKET COLLECTOR and NEWS AGENT. That last title was generally seen on trains in the Northeast. I have two NEWS AGENT badges. One is from the long ago abandoned Maine two foot gauge Phillips & Rangeley, which became part of the famous Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes in 1906. The other NEWS AGENT badge is from the G.W.A.D.R. & N. Co. A little research back in the late 1970’s discovered those letters stood for George W. Armstrong Dining Room & News Company. Then there are badges that just carry the name of the railroad such as MAINE CENTRAL. One badge I have is unique, and reported to be the only one made. The letters across the top are M.C.R.R. and underneath are the letters B.&S.R.R.R. It is reported to have been used by the OPERATOR at the junction of the Maine Central’s Mountain Division and the Bridgton & Saco River RR, another of Maine’s narrow gauge pikes. There are also railroads and trolley lines that have had badges with such marvelous titles as LOADING AGENT, BAGGAGE HANDLER, GENERAL AGENT NURSE, HOSTESS and DOCK MASTER. Of course there were also badges for employees who worked around the train station such as OPERATOR, ASSISTANT STATION AGENT, STATION AGENT and of course STATION MASTER.

I said that my collection was larger at one time. My thought is how do you manage a railroadiana collection? You can continue to grow it forever or at some point start to dispose or it in whole or in stages as part of an estate or retirement plan. My reason for dramatically downsizing the collection was my advancing years and the desire to convert an asset into something that was more manageable for my wife if something happened to me. These railroadiana assets became dollars in a mutual fund. All collectors should consider a move like this as they reach their later years. In the meantime enjoy your collection.

Further Information:

For those interested in learning more about cap badges, Jerry recommends membership in the Railroad Collectors of America, Inc. (RCAI), which was founded in 1971. The quarterly RCAI bulletin has occasional articles about and photos of cap badges.

When preparing its exhibit, “Prairie Thunder: 80 Years of Midwestern Railroad Photography,” the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington, Ill., turned to a resource not usually available to researchers: the local newspaper archive.

Newspapers, which publish photographs every day, would seem like obvious places to look for photo- graphs, but most don’t save many of their images. Things are different in Bloomington, however, and being a rail- road town helps.

“Our newspaper, the Pantagraph, has preserved most of its photos from about 1934 on,” said Mike Matejka, exhibit curator. “To find these we basically went down to the basement, where there are about 7 big metal cabinets full of long, narrow boxes, with individual negatives in brown negative envelopes with very brief penciled captions and usually the photographer’s name. 1951-56 is missing, due to a pipe breaking over that cabinet a few years ago and everything went to the dumpster.

“So it was tedious days of sitting and flipping through these boxes and pulling out any negative envelope where the cryptic title might have led to a subject of interest. Most of these are everyday, slice of life photos. Since the Chicago & Alton Shops were the basic employer, photographers often went over to the shops just for a photo, for a retirement, when a new locomotive or something different was shopped, for photos to complement Labor Day or other workplace stories, or for the annual progress issue of the paper, which highlighted local businesses,” he said.

It’s rare indeed to find such a resource. A few newspaper photo archives are available, such as Chicago Daily News, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and Minneapolis-St. Paul newspapers. Acquired by the St. Louis Mercantile Library in 1986, when the Globe-Democrat ceased publication, the photo archives (virtuallymissouri.umsystem.edu/ cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;g=vm;c=mercic) form a historical library for St. Louis and the state of Missouri, but only a small fraction of the photographs in the collection are available electronically. The Daily News collection, available at the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/), has 55,000 images of urban life captured on

glass plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Daily News, then one of Chicago’s leading newspapers. The source materials for this collection are at the Chicago Historical Society. Minnesota Historical Society has extensive photos from the Minneapolis Star/Tribune/Journal (individual papers that merged long ago) and the St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press. Many are in the catalog. For people willing to do a lot of time consuming digging, MHS also has uncataloged negatives, sorted in calendar order. The Cleveland Press Collection (www.clevelandmemory.org/press/), the afternoon newspaper’s former editorial library or “morgue” includes hundreds of thousands of clippings and photographs. The Press was published from 1878 until 1982. The Illinois State Historical Society archives in Springfield IL has the East St Louis, Ill., Metro-East Journal photo collection.

“Prairie Thunder,” the Bloomington exhibit, continues through February 19, 2006. The 75 images include industrial scenes from 1934 to 1950 from the Chicago & Alton Railroad’s main shops, once Bloomington’s largest employer, from the Pantagraph. Bruce Meyer, a retired Chicago electrical engineer who worked for diesel locomotive builder Electro-Motive Corp, photographically explored 1950s railroading. As a teen and college student, Meyer captured the last days of Illinois Central steam locomotives. The contemporary railroad scene is covered by Steve Smedley, a Pantagraph photojournalist and widely published rail photographer. Exhibit Curator, Mike Matejka, explains, “There is more to railroad photography than simply a picture of a train. These photographs were chosen for their aesthetic interest, displaying the interplay between the railroad and the prairie landscape, plus for their human interest, capturing a workforce who daily faces a rugged and often challenging profession. ”Matejka works for the Great Plains Laborers District Council and edits the Grand Prairie Union News. He is the co-author of Bloomington’s C&A Shops: Our Lives Remembered (along with Greg Koos, 1982) and recently consulted with the California State Railroad Museum on labor history themes for its new exhibits.

In Texas, Former President and Mrs. Bush opened New Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at College Station. It continues through July 30, 2006.

The exhibit has about 1,000 artifacts and documents and 300 images (still photos or video) in two temporary exhibit galleries. The 2,976 square foot Ansary Gallery contains exhibits focusing on contemporary railroading including specific discussions of traveling by train; railroad technology; railroads, what they are and what they do; model railroading; and presidential travel by train. The 1,650 square foot Fidelity Corridor Gallery contains exhibits focusing on the history of the railroad industry and railroad technology. About 52 photographs come from the Center for Railroad Photography & Art.

The Bush Library exhibit covers everything from the train’s inception to modern day locomotives and routes, including an actual General Electric locomotive cab, historic railroad china, a Union Pacific restored caboose, clocks and pocket watches, selections from Frank Sinatra’s model railroad collection, an executive order signed by Abraham Lincoln setting the gauge for the railroad, Overland model railroad cars, and a three foot long crystal. In March 2006 the Golden Spike, which was symbolically driven on May 10, 1869, at Promontory to complete the first transcontinental railroad, will be on display. More than a dozen model railroads from various associations throughout Texas are on display. For children, the exhibit will have a number of touch and learn stations highlighting issues of railroad safety and railroad operations.

Events during the exhibit include a free movie program with a railroad theme; guest lectures by prominent historians, railroad executives, regulators, and rail enthusiasts; and modeling seminars. Several modular model railroad clubs will set up and operate their HO, N, and Z scale model layouts in the rotunda of the library.

In Minneapolis at the Mill City Museum (www.millcitymuseum.org), the focus is advertising. “Railroads and the Marketing of the Northwest,” through April 30, 2006, features advertising images from the Minnesota Historical Society highlighting how railroads promoted the resources of Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana. Included are 19th-century railroad advertisements touting agriculture in the Red River Valley, and 20th-century images promoting railroad tourism of the west, especially to the new national parks in Montana and Wyoming. Among the railroads represented are the Northern Pacific, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba (and its successor the Great Northern), and the Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie (Soo Line). The exhibit is open during museum hours.

The Virginia Museum of Transportation (www.vmt.org), in cooperation with the Robert Mann Gallery of New and the City of Roanoke is presenting the photographic exhibit, Starlight On The Rails, through March 26, 2006. The exhibit consists of 48 photographs from the original show at the Robert Mann Gallery and the companion book Starlight On The Rails, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in 2000.

In Sacramento, the Center (www.railphoto-art.org) exhibit, “Still a World Apart,” is on display at the California State Railroad Museum through mid-May 2006. It, with CSRM’s reinstalled galleries and new exhibits, highlights the human side of modern railroading in the western states, a last frontier where some people run trains or maintain track in all weather at all hours of the day and night, while others spend their entire job shift in front of computer screens. North American Railway Foundation provided funding for both projects. The Center selected 31 photographs by contemporary photographers. CTC Board Railroads Illustrated featured the exhibit in its September issue.

In no small part due to the efforts of the Center and NARF, railroad work has a prominent role in several of the exhibits.

Next quarter: An exhibition, “Railroads and the American Industrial Landscape: Ted Rose Paintings and Photographs,” is March 9–May 29, 2006, at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee. The exhibit, publication, and conservation program is a collaboration of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, Special Collections Department of Lake Forest (Illinois) College, and the Haggerty Museum. Rose (1940-2002), AWS, NWS, took the photographs while he was in high school and college in 1956-1962.

Member Forum provides an opportunity for Society members to share opinions regarding, and ask questions about Society matters, as well as material appearing in the Newsletter. Please send all correspondence to the Editor via

U.S. Mail or e-mail. Due to space constraints, submissions may be edited for length. General questions about railroad history cannot be accepted. For these questions, please utilize our Archives Services and/or our Internet discussion group.