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| Occupational Shaving Mug: Handcar with Two Workmen - Tom Close |
Outstanding occupational shaving mug showing two men on a handcar. This mug is in excellent condition. The gilt is remarkably fine and distinct. Note the detailed work on the decorative framing. The scene itself is bright and clear showing the two men in typical dress standing on the handcar in a rich green landscape.
I attempted to figure out what type of handcar it was. Using the extensive research from Dr Lary Shaffer's
Rebuilding a Sheffield No 1 Railroad Handcar, the handcar on the mug seems closest to The "Buda" pictured above. Of course, the artist may have simplified the image and omitted many details. It could just as easily be a Sheffield, as far as I can tell.
For a more complete history of the Railroad Handcar, check out
Railroad Handcar History by Mason Clark.
From
Wikipedia: Handcars:
Handcars were critical to the operation of railroads during a time when railroads were essential forms of transportation in America, from about 1850 to 1910. There may have been handcars as early as the late 1840s but they were quite common during the American Civil War. They were a very important tool in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. There were many thousands of them built. They were commonly assigned to a "section" of track, the section being between about 6 to 10 miles long, depending upon the traffic and speed experienced on the section. Each section would have a section crew that would maintain that piece of track. Each section usually had a section house which was used to store tools and the section's handcar. Roughly 130,000 miles of track had been constructed in America by 1900. Thus, considering there was a handcar assigned to every ten miles of that track, there would have been a minimum of 13,000 handcars operating in the United States. Motor section cars began to appear in the very early 1900s, or a few years earlier. They quickly replaced handcars. Those handcars that were not scrapped as part of the World War One, were probably scrapped for World War Two. It is not clear how many handcars survived. They can be found in railroad museums and some are in private hands.
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| Occupational Shaving Mug: Handcar with Two Workmen - Tom Close |
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| Occupational Shaving Mug: Handcar with Two Workmen - Tom Close |
This is from
an interesting account by Dr Lary Shaffer, who rebuilt a railroad handcar. He milled his own wood to replace the wheel inserts and planking, re-straightened bent axels and lovingly restored every minute aspect of his handcar. It was clearly a labor of love. Check out his site for a lot of information and photographs of railroad handcars.
When I was a kid in upstate New York, maybe 12 years-old, childhood buddies John Hine and Tom Loveday and I used to hike along the rails of our local short line railroad, the Fonda, Johnstown and Gloversville RR Co. It was a friendly little railroad, where the train personel would wave and blow the horn, rather than call the cops. One day while we were taking a rest next to the collapsing Broadablin section house, I noticed some rusty metal in the grass. It was the remains of an old railroad handcar with the wood mostly rotted away and the metal spread out like a dinosaur skeleton.
I went to the railroad offices and they sold me the pile of scrap iron for $2. I wish that I had been smart enough to take pictures of it before I moved anything, but, after all, I was a jerky 12 year-old kid. My dad kindly drove to Broadalbin in the station wagon and helped me load the metal into the car. I scrounged some pieces of track from a local leather mill and rebult the handcar with lumber yard 2 X 4s as best I could with hand tools and my 12 year-old skills. It worked. Friends and I played on it in the yard. I grew up and left home. The handcar sat outdoors for about 25 years until I had a home of my own with a cellar where I could store the parts. By then the lumber yard wood had rotted and I was almost back to where I had started in Broadalbin.
