Model Forum / General / Railroads / June 2009

My wife likes to wander through antique stores on weekend mornings,
and I usually go with her because you just never know what you'll
find. (In several instances I've found brass locos and other model
railroading paraphernalia for sale cheap.) So this morning we walked
into a place just down the street from our home and discovered that
they'd opened up the normally gated-off rear outdoors section where
they keep the "junk" that doesn't need to be protected from the
weather.

After peering at a whole bunch of old rusted tractor parts and pot-
bellied stoves I spotted something that looked mildly interesting
buried beneath a pile of old rusty bedsteads, and closer examination
revealed an old rusty hand-truck that looked as if it might -perhaps-
have once graced a railroad station platform.

Levering the bedsteads and stoves out of the way allowed me to get
close enough to determine that it had once been painted box car red,
that it had "140 LBS" stenciled on one leg and a faded and chipped "A??
F RY" stenciled on the other.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33885727@N03/3644337883/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33885727@N03/3645143500/

This confirmed my suspicions, as railroad-owned hand-trucks that were
used for hauling around LCL freight usually had the hand-truck's
weight stenciled on them somewhere so that said freight could be
weighed accurately without unloading it and then reloading it onto the
hand-truck again. (You just wheeled the whole thing onto the scale and
then subtracted 140 pounds from the grand total. And believe me, it
*DOES* weigh 140 pounds!)

An inquiry to the shop's owner revealed that it had been sitting there
for at *least* ten years, and that he'd happily take $40 for it, so we
loaded it into the pickup truck and discovered in the process that (A)
the handlebars are open-ended, (B) it had been standing upright for at
least ten years out of doors, and (C) as a result, both tubular
uprights were full-to-overflowing with filthy, rusty, stagnant rain
water that spilled out all over the truck's bed. (Note to self: wash
truck.)

Both of the wheels were rusted solid to the axle, but an hour in the
back yard with a can of penetrating oil and a six-foot steel breaker-
bar got them rotating smootly again. And, in the process, I found the
letters ATSF had been cast into the steel axle-supports and had been
covered with many years worth of dirt and rust, not to mention several
coats of AT&SF freight-car red paint.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33885727@N03/3645150042/

So what we've got here is an early 20th century Santa Fe freight/
baggage hand-truck in operating if rusty condition. These things were
ubiquitous around both freight and passenger stations, and while this
one is a Santa Fe prototype the basic design was pretty much
universal, so you could model this one and be reasonably close to the
ones used by *your* railroad.

Herewith the URL for the entire photostream, which has front. rear,
and side elevation shots that include a yardstick for scale reference.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33885727@N03/

At circa 5' by 2' this would be a fun modeling project in anything
down to HO scale, but anyone wishing to try it in N had better have
amazingly good vision and an incredibly steady hand.

Question: does anybody out there know if this thing should be
restored? They always tell you not to do so on "Antiques Roadshow" as
it can destroy an antique's value. But left to itself this thing is
going to continue to rust away even if it's kept under cover, so I'm
tempted to take it apart, sandblast off all the rust and old paint,
and repaint it in an authentic Santa Fe freight car red.

Opinions?

~Pete