Sorry Plowhandle, But your comment got me to thinking…Other railroads with logos that were tied to various other ‘critters’…My personal favorite is the story of hw the SLSF RR got its logo, and how it [a “Coonskin”] identified the Frisco RR til its demise:
"…The story, as written below, is authentic, and was compiled by Miss Eula Mae Stratton, an employee in the Springfield General Office.
Before the turn of the century, so the old timers say, Mr. G.H. Nettleton, then Vice-President of the railroad (which was then known as the old KCM&B) was making an inspection tour of the system. The train pulled into the station of Neosho, Mo., (although some say it was Carthage, most historians however say it was Neosho), with the private car stopping in view of the west end of the depot building on which was tacked a coon hide to dry.
UP does still “use” many of their precedessors’ marks (beyond those on the heritage locos) on freight cars. This includes some relatively new ones. There are, for example, a bunch of UP covered hoppers running around with “CMO” marks (the Chicago, Minneapolis & Omaha - a C&NW affiliate which ceased to exist as a separate railroad in 1973).
I know just enough about trademarks to be dangerous. But my understanding is that formal cancellation of trademark is not the only way the trademark can be “lost”. It can also be “lost” through lack of use, among other things. Trademark / service mark legal protection exists to protect the provider of the goods or services marketed under the mark. Once the mark no longer identifies the provider (whether intentionally or not), the protection is lost. For example, one way “trademark” protection can be lost (even if the mark is registered) is if the mark over time becomes a generic name for a product rather than its maker. “Aspirin” is a good example. It used to be a trademark of Bayer (it still is in Canada), but the trademark was lost in the US when it became a generic name for the medicine itself. You’ll often see companies try to avoid this be using phrases such as “Kleenix brand facial tissue” in their marketing rather than identifying the product simply as “Kleenix”.
I still hold that it is a representation of a buffalo hide. Many years ago, in a reprint of a 1922 RI history was a story of how the emblem came about. The story was that a hide had been tacked to a depot wall. Someone came along and wrote “The Great Rock Island Route” on the hide.
Aspirin in the US has a more complicated history. It never went through the genericization process. During WWI, Bayer and all its patents, trademarks, and other assets were seized by the US government. They were sold off piecemeal after the war, but the term “aspirin” was never re-trademarke
There is a new guy that is claiming in a few collectors’ sites that I frequent that he is the Owner and Chief Engineer of the “new” Rock Island Railroad.