Good morning, a friend asked for some help in identifying something he found at his father’s house in Toledo.
What he found is a brass disk, similar to a coin, about the size and thickness of a quarter . It’s approx 7/8" in diameter. It has a hole punched in the top that might be used to hang it on a hook or nail.
One side is engraved with
M. of W.
CLEV’D
DIV’N
The other side is engraved with
B.&O. R.R.
below that, is stamped a number:
7016
If anyone has any idea what this was used for and the significance of the number, id greatly appreciate it.
Could it possibly be a ‘tool crib token’? In some large mechanical facilities that required use of specialized tools for work being preformed. The worker’s would ‘borrow tools’ from the Shop’s ‘tool crib’, and would surrender their own numbered token to the tool crib manager to hold til the tool was returned and replaced back in the tool crib inventory.
It was an easy system to keep up with who had checked a tool out, and at the end of the day (end of the shift(?) track the tool’s location down. Thus keeping the inventory of tools in order.
but the “M. of W.” (Maintenance of Way) is inconsistent with that.
So i’d say instead that it’s employee “brass” - an early form of a personal ID badge or card that was hung on a board when the employee “clocked in” (“dropped brass”) to go to work, and was taken off when the employee “clocked out” to go off duty, etc. See this article for a decent explanation, part of which I’ve copied and pasted below:
"The Brass System of Timekeeping; In the old days before card swipes, biometrics readers and bar codes were so common the “Brass System” was a really simple inexpensive and reliable method of timekeeping and tool control on large construction projects. Actually, the practice started as a safety roll call method in the mining industry.
Each employee was issued a brass coin approximately the size of a half dollar stamped with the employee’s unique control number and a small hole to facilitate hanging it on a peg board in the brass shack. The typical brass shack was like a ticket booth with the window parallel to a walkthrough gate called the “brass alley”.
Might also be a key chain tag or key fob for switch lock keys…7016 sounds a lot like an employee number…mine is 7283 and it is engraved on my switch keys.
Through my lifetime - (b 1946) B&O has never had a Cleveland Division. At one time the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling (CL&W) was part of the Monongah Division and subsequently the portion from Holloway, OH North was part of the Akron Division. The Cleveland Terminal & Valley (CT&V) was always part of the Akron Division as it ran from Cleveland through Akron & Canton to Mineral City.
I am not familiar with the B&O’s organizational structure before my birth, as my father didn’t speak about prior structures, only the structure he was working in.