Railroad Keys

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In order to use the wide variety of locks that railroads used to secure switches, signals, buildings, and other facilities, employees were issued special keys. Such keys were carefully guarded and were carried at all times on the job. Losing a key was once considered grounds for instant dismissal, and the story goes that the wife of more than one railroad man would safeguard his keys while he was off the job lest he lose them at the local watering hole! Today, keys from long-gone railroads are much prized by collectors, with rare ones having substantial value.

Railroad keys were typically made of brass. As with locks, there are different styles of keys, but the majority of railroad keys were of a standard size made to fit a switch lock, with the bit customized to fit the particular locks of each railroad. Typically, keys were marked with a railroad's name or initials An example is shown above right, marked for the Northern Pacific Railway and manufactured by Adams & Westlake.A number of manufacturers made keys for railroad use.

Update: Fall, 2010. Here's a great comment sent in by JB in the Fall of 2010 concerning the use of traditional railroad keys on a small railroad in the 70's: " When the New Hope & Ivyland RR in Pennsylvania back in 1966 bought an old Reading Company branch, they continued using Reading switch locks. They probably bought the keys from Adams & Westlake, as that's where I bought them when I had storekeeper's duties in the late 1970s. The earlier keys, some of which I know were from Adlake were stamped at the factory N H I R and had a smooth surface. But when I started ordering them, what came was obviously sand cast, with a very grainy surface that made it hard to see the letters, which may have even been part of the mold, instead of being stamped later. There was no manufacturer's marking. I was so disappointed with the appearance that I specified in future orders that they come unmarked. I then used a large bench mounted electric grinding wheel to make one side of the bow smoother. It wasn't a mirror finish, but better than the sand cast look. Now I used a 3/8 inch Sears, Roebuck & Co. lettering stamp set to mark them N H I R, usually in a semicircle instead of a straight line. Since I had to buy 48 at a time, more than we needed, we also sold them to visitors in the Gift Shoppe to avoid tying up so much money for a long time. By that time, ConRail was running the old Reading company lines and using Penn Central locks and keys on them." -JB [Our thanks to JB for this comment!]

Below we present a variety of key markings from different manufacturers, courtesy of Bill Kajdzik who kindly provided these digital scans.


From left to right: Adams & Westlake Co. (Chicago), ARO, and C.T. Fraim (Lancaster, PA).


From left to right: M.M. Buck, Handlan, and Handlan-Buck, all incarnations of the same company in St. Louis, MO.


From left to right: J.L. Howard & Co. (Hartford, CT), Loeffel Holz & Co, (Milwaukee, WI) and F.S. Hardware Co. (Lancaster, PA).


From left to right: Romer & Co. (Newark, NJ), Thomas Slaight (Newark NJ), and Slaymaker (Lancaster, PA).

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Bill Kajdzik for the digital scans.