Antique Railroad Lanterns and Lamps

In the days before city lights and GPS, railroad lanterns served a very important purpose: they communicated signals at night between trains and stations. Sometimes, a timely lantern was a life-or-death illumination. According to one romanticized 19th-century story, a 15-year-old girl named Kate Shelley saved the Fast Atlantic Express from a broken bridge by alerting a station agent, whose lantern signal to the train averted disaster. In the most basic sense, railroad lanterns have four components: a base, a wire guard (or cage), a chimney, and a glass globe housing the light source. The cage protects this globe from damage, but, even so, antique lanterns with intact globes are rare. Lanterns can be divided into a few basic types: Fixed-, tall-, and short-globe lanterns. Fixed-globe lanterns represent the earliest category of antique railroad lanterns. These were most popular from the time of the Civil War to a few decades afterward. Most of those that have survived were used on railway lines in the northeastern United States, which had older lines than other parts of the country. Unlike later lantern designs, the globes on fixed-globe lanterns could not be easily removed from the lantern frame. And since railroads were still young, these lanterns were generally not very standardized and were made in a variety of styles. In 1865, William Westlake built the first tall-globe lantern, which was widely used from the 1870s until World War I. The globes on these lanterns generally measured between 5 3/8 and 6 inches tall. Unlike fixed-globe lanterns, their globes could be removed easily, and the globes’ larger size made them better suited to burn signal oil, which was becoming the most common lantern fuel. Because these globes are relatively rare today, many collectors consider them the most desirable. After World War I and well into the 1960s, short-globe lanterns, whose globes measured between 3 ¼ to 4 ½ inches tall, were most common. The smaller chamber size was better suited to burn kerosene, which had replaced signal oil as the main lantern fuel. Short-globe lanterns were manufactured by companies like Adams & Westlake, Armspear Manufacturing, R.E. Dietz, Lovell-Dressel, Handlan, Atlantic and St. Lawrence R.R., and Star Headlight and Lantern Company, whose slogan was “We Light the Way.” The fixed-, tall-, and short-globe lanterns are known as trainsman’s or railroadman’s lanterns since they were used by various crew members on a train. A fourth type of lantern is the conductor’s lantern, also known as a presentation lantern since it was sometimes given to conductors as an award or mark of distinction. Because conductors had the highest status of any crew member on a passenger train, their lanterns were typically made of finer materials than a standard signalman’s, gleaming with polished brass or nickel-plating, and sometimes featured a glass globe of two different colors. The rarest of these lanterns even had a conductor’s name etched onto them, often inside a decorative wreath. In contrast, a signalman’s lantern was typically more durable with an easily adjustable flame. Another major type of railroad lantern is the inspector’s lantern, which was also utilitarian in design. Inspectors used these lanterns to examine train cars, so they had reflective surfaces designed to focus the globe’s light. Inspector’s lanterns were generally made from sheet metal for durability. Old lanterns with railroad markings are generally more valuable than unmarked ones. The rarer and more unusual the marking, the more valuable the lantern. Not to be confused with railroad lanterns, antique railroad lamps can be distinguished from the former by their lack of a globe. Unlike lanterns, lamps were designed to be stationary rather than carried. These sheet-metal cylinders or boxes featured one or more round lenses to transmit light from inside, and sometimes these lenses were different colors. In the mid-19th century, as more trains were run at night, methods were needed to light the vehicles, particularly from the front. The first headlight was developed by Horatio Allen by attaching two small flatcars to the engine front. On top of these, Allen built a wood fire in a pot over a bed of sand to give passersby some visual cue that the train was arriving. Eventually, large candles in glass cases were used as headlamps, and by the 1850s, the standard headlight included a whale-oil lamp fitted with reflectors inside a rectangular box of sheet metal. During this era, engineers often brought their own headlights, which were mounted on ornate metal brackets and sometimes featured elaborate landscapes or portraits painted on the exterior. Unlike the bright white headlights, caboose lamps or taillights were often four-sided lamps with red-hued lenses used to signal the end of a train. Other lamps used different colors to indicate certain needs: Blue lamps marked cars or equipment that needed to remain stationary, green lamps were used as a tower signal for “proceed with caution,” and yellow lamps marked camp cars where repairmen lived. Four-sided switch lamps were commonly fitted with red and green lenses, with a green signal marking a switch as straight ahead, while a red signal indicated a turn out. Engine classification lamps were mounted on the sides of a locomotive to indicate the type of train using white and green lenses. Other kinds of old railroad lamps included track-walker lamps, semaphore lamps, and crossing-gate lamps.