Recently, a member at the Whitewater Valley Railroad talked to me about their Dearborn Tower. Dearborn is a 16 lever Saxby & Farmer interlocker and although WV has the levers for the tower, they do not have any numbers for those levers. They are looking to see if anyone might have a set of numbers that they might have acquired from one of the many interlocking towers that have been destroyed as the railroads took these towers out of service over the last few years. I was at Hoosier Valley yesterday so took some photos of the numbers that are located in Grasselli Tower at HVRM to give an idea as to what WV is looking for.

The first photo shows two of the unrestored levers in Grasselli after I had removed the number plate from lever 55 to show the hole in the lever where this number is positioned. Lever 54 next to it, shows the number plate still in place.

The second photo shows number plate 55 and a duplicate plate (number 59) to give an indication as to what these plates look like when not on the lever itself.

Finally, I've included a close up of number plate number 5 that I had taken a while back, to give an idea as to what the plate looks like mounted on the lever itself.

If Whitewater cannot find a set, then the plan is to make a set of number plates for their 16 levers. Hopefully before that becomes necessary, a set of historic numbers will show up. Anybody out there have, or know of, such a set?

Thanks!

Les

Looks like a 3D printing job to me......

Lost wax casting could net you some duplicates, perhaps customize for more numbers, or you get creative with wood.