passenger silhouettes ?

[1_R.I_nut]

I have a friend that collects older lionel, marx, tin plate, and so on. He has been looking for the passengers that were printed on the clear plastic window material? Are there any suppliers / dealers that carry such an item any more? Or should he just go to the local copy shop and make his own!

[trolleyboy]

I can’t think of any that are available in sheet form from any of the manufacturers. Bachman and Model power still put them in some of their product. I’m thinking the photocopy route would be the best if that’s what he wants. That or buy some sitting people and do some inside detail on the cars.

Rob

[lvanhen]

For Lionel, Marx, etc., you’re better off going to the toy train forum. The guys over there have a better line on parts etc for these trains.[:)]

[dknelson]

OT: when the prototype Long Island Railroad was new they put real silhouettes in the passenger cars to disguise the fact that hardly anybody was riding the train.

Dave Nelson

[chutton01]

OT: when the prototype Long Island Railroad was new they put real silhouettes in the passenger cars to disguise the fact that hardly anybody was riding the train.

Dave Nelson

Is this joke? You mean the 1830s version of the LIRR (whatever it was called then), which was designed to carry passengers from LIC to the North Fork to meet up with ferrys to take them on to Boston (and in the process bypassing many existing LI villages). You mean some of the later companies (which were eventually absorbed into the LIRR)? One of the local trolley companies?

I don’t remember reading anything of this sort - do you have a cite?

[Dean-58]

Actually, I read about this somewhere, maybe in Bull Session of MR, back in the '50s. It was apparently done sometime or other in the late 19th or early 20th century–for the reason given: they wanted people to think their ridership was better than it actually was!

One of the problems of old age is the lack of memory, and I have a stack of Model Trains magazines from the mid to late '50s, as well as MR from 1945 to present, plus RMC from 1960 to present. Trying to remember where or when something like this was mentioned would boggle my already boggled mind!

Dean-58

Duluth MN

[R_T_POTEET]

OT: when the prototype Long Island Railroad was new they put real silhouettes in the passenger cars to disguise the fact that hardly anybody was riding the train.

Dave Nelson

Is this joke? You mean the 1830s version of the LIRR (whatever it was called then), which was designed to carry passengers from LIC to the North Fork to meet up with ferrys to take them on to Boston (and in the process bypassing many existing LI villages). You mean some of the later companies (which were eventually absorbed into the LIRR)? One of the local trolley companies?

I don’t remember reading anything of this sort - do you have a cite?

Sometimes even an April Fool’s joke gets over my head but I did catch this one!

[dknelson]

OT: when the prototype Long Island Railroad was new they put real silhouettes in the passenger cars to disguise the fact that hardly anybody was riding the train.

Dave Nelson

Is this joke? You mean the 1830s version of the LIRR (whatever it was called then), which was designed to carry passengers from LIC to the North Fork to meet up with ferrys to take them on to Boston (and in the process bypassing many existing LI villages). You mean some of the later companies (which were eventually absorbed into the LIRR)? One of the local trolley companies?

I don’t remember reading anything of this sort - do you have a cite?

Yes I do. Steel Rails to the Sunrise a book by Ron Ziel and George Foster published in 1965.

Dave Nelson

[Dean-58]

OT: when the prototype Long Island Railroad was new they put real silhouettes in the passenger cars to disguise the fact that hardly anybody was riding the train.

Dave Nelson

Is this joke? You mean the 1830s version of the LIRR (whatever it was called then), which was designed to carry passengers from LIC to the North Fork to meet up with ferrys to take them on to Boston (and in the process bypassing many existing LI villages). You mean some of the later companies (which were eventually absorbed into the LIRR)? One of the local trolley companies?

I don’t remember reading anything of this sort - do you have a cite?

Yes I do. Steel Rails to the Sunrise a book by Ron Ziel and George Foster published in 1965.

Dave Nelson

Bravo, Dave! Doubters take heed: MR had a passle (or is it passel?)–okay, make it a “flurry”–of letters from time to time, where someone criticized someone else’s photo, usually of a locomotive. Almost every time, old-timers chimed in to say, “There’s a protype for just about everything, chum.” And they could Quote Chapter and Verse, and even threaten offer to show a photo to prove the doubters were woefully uninformed.

I remember reading this LIRR tidbit somewhere, probably in MR’s old “Bull Session,” but can’t for the life of me narrow it down. Maybe “Ray L. Rhodes,” if indeed it was he, was quoting Zeal’s book–and Zeal was an expert on the Long Island!

(Thanks too, Dave, for convincing me I was right, too!)

Dean-58

[chutton01]

Speaking of chapter & verse…
I have borrowed from the library a 1965 copy of ‘Steel Rails to the Sunrise’ (heh, just noticed it’s autographed by Mr. Ziel & Mr. Foster no less), and so far I have failed to find the Shillouette cite - I guess it’s in one of the photo captions (the book is, on the whole, mostly photos and photo-captions, with some background material spread throughout the chapters). Can anyone give me a page number?