I’m currently building a 1950’s layout module that could use some traffic cones, and assume they had them in the 50’s? If so, does anyone know what color they were (white, yellow?)? I’m sure they were not the Day-Glow red we have today. I DID find out about stop signs…yellow with black letters, same shape as today. Thanks, Joe
What I remember from the 1950’s was not cones, but kerosine “pots”. The highway department would use them exactly as a cone is used in a construction area. They were black spheres, half the size of a basketball, filled with kerosine with the wick out the top. Whereas cones may also have been used I only recollect these kerosine pots from the fifties, right up into the early sixties. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Hope this helps.
Stop signs indeed were yellow or orange with black “STOP”.
Chris
OMG! I guess I’m old. I remember those pots. They looked just like cartoon bombs.
You too huh? I also remember them and I am still very young (still wet behind the ears) I will be 49 in November. I used to have one around but haven’t seen it in years. Ever try to blow out the flame on one? Mike
RDG1519 is quite correct, traffic cones are a relatively modern phenomena. As I recall, the kerosene pots were followed by “sawhorse” type barriers with flashing yellow lanterns (60’s - 70’s) followed by the dayglow orange cones.
If you’re going to do 50’s, you just gotta have some Burma Shave signs. http://www.two-lane.com/burmashave.html
There’s virtual example of a Burma Shave sign about halfway down the page.
Andre
I agree, only kerosene pots in the 50’s as well as wooden saw horses, which I remember as being painted in black and white stripes. No cones, vinyl tape or flashing lamps in those days.
I think a basketball would be too big, more like the size of a bowling ball or maybe a soccer ball.
Tom
No traffic cones in the 50’s. And unlike now where they put a couple dozen traffic cones up ahead of the problem, they only used a couple just a few feet before the construction/repairs etc.
Even truckers carried kerosene flares for break downs and other emergencies. And I don’t think there were companies that made a living just setting up the pots around road repairs.
Life sure was a lot simpler then!
I’ll second the black, bomb-shaped kerosene burners. Also large saw-horse-like moveable barriers immediately adjacent to the excavation, if there was one. The horizontal beam was painted alternately black and white in (approximately) 6-inch bands. Ordinary work on ordinary streets would have three or four smudge pots (as we kids used to call them,) while something being done on a busy arterial would rate six or so.
No signs two miles down the road warning “Road Work Ahead.” No descending stairsteps of reduced speed limits, either.
I wonder how hard it would be to model a smudge pot, using a small LED for a starting point. A little dab of transparent orange on a yellow LED would give something close to the right color.
Chuck
AH HA!..I do remember those pots! Thanks all, for the info. Since I’m 64, I should have remembered. One thing I do remember is our car in long traffic jams going over the Pulaski Skyway in Northern NJ, after visiting my Grandparents in NY. 99% of the time they were caused by cars overheating, or having flat tires…two things we don’t see much of today. Joe
For everyones information, a few of the old signs still exist in Indiana and Michigan along rural roads!
Some of those kind farmers apparently kept them, fixed them up, and put them back out.
There are a few in Indiana between US 30 and US 6 along Indiana State road 13.
Those kerosene pots were filled and lit every night before dark. In the morning after it was light they came around and put the pots out.
They were called smudge pots, highway torches, road flares, road torches and several other names. Best-known was the Toledo Torch pressed-steel road torch which was introduced over 70 years ago (patented in 1929). It would burn for 12-14 hours, stay lit in high winds and was self-righting. There was even an attachment to allow a Toledo Torch to be hung from a wooden sawhorse-style barricade. Other brands were Dietz Highway Torch, Embury Luck-E-Lite, Handlan and Storm King.
Incidentally, they weren’t always black (at least not initially). They could be red, orange, yellow, blue or silver.
Similar torches, but with square bases, were made for trucks and buses to use in case of breakdowns. They were provided in three-torch sets to comply with federal safety regulations.
Our town used to paint their barricades orange to match the DPW trucks. I have also seen them in yellow, white and gray.
I also remember the safety cones. They were yellow with a black base and red top and they were fairly heavy. Instead of being used in mass quanitities for traffic lane control, a few would be put out for things like school crossings, police roadblocks and such. They had a hole in the top that allowed the insertion of a special STOP sign.
In parts of West Texas, we didn’t have paved roads to worry about repairs and traffic barriers. Railroad crossings weren’t marked and you yielded to the guy approaching an intersection from your right 'cause there weren’t roadway signs to muddle up the countryside.
If there ever was an accident, they didn’t need to put out flares or warnings for motorists because everyone in the county knew about it anyway.
In fact, my hometown was so small, it was just this past year we finally got the 5th digit in our Zip Code.
So, it sounds like cones may have had limited use? I’m builing a Drive-In Movie module, and planned on using a row of 3 of them to separate the in/out lanes just before the ticket booth. The 2-lane entrance road will be gravel, so no painted white line. See…sometimes we “O” 3-Railers care about details.
Joe,
Our local drive-in used barrels to seperate lanes. I seem to recall they were painted a bright red and were filled with water so they would stay in place.
Tom
Well, I was a kid back then, but somewhere back up in the dusty neuron attic is a memory of “witches’ hats,” which was my Mom’s name for traffic cones. This was likely the late 50’s or early 60’s. I grew up on Long Island, New York.
And just for laughs, we went to the drive-in last week. There is a drive-in in Wellfleet, Massachusetts (on Cape Cod) so we got to see the new “Pirates” movie in that environment. They used barrels, by the way.
While I, like many others here, clearly recall the smudge pots and wooden sawhorses, I also remember, here in the Northeast, occasionally seeing red kerosene lanterns (apparently just like the RR ones) hanging from the sawhorses at road repair sites.
CNJ831
Im not sure about those bombs… er pots.
They did have great big barrels to move in the work zones. Come to think of it… there were not that many. Bridge out signs were much more common back then.
During the 'fifties, out here in rurual Northern California (and yes, Northern California was mostly rural back in the 'fifties), we used saw-horses with flashing lanterns on the top for any road work. I don’t remember seeing traffic cones until around the 1970’s. Check the Walther’s catalogue, it seems to me that those saw-horses are available. I know I’ve got some running around in my detail box, ready to put on the roads (when I get them built) for my WWII-era model railroad. But traffic cones, at least as far as I remember, would be way too ‘modern’ for the '50’s.
Tom
I remember smudge pots in early sixties,along with saw horses, by mid-sixties I recall cones were used by state highway dept, usually they were put down on lines in road after line repaints. the cones were shorter, approximately 24" or so,yellow with a red stripe on top. it seems in mid-sixties,they started using those battery powered flashers, some on the ground and some on the sawhorses…