I came across this at a railroad museum in Wakefield, NH. Someone thought it was a ballast tool. It's about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long. Any ideas?

The first thing that comes to my mind is not railroad-specific: the blade from a windmill.

It would be helpful to see a side view of the tool. It looks like a float, for leveling concrete or cement, but one that long would be difficult for one man to control.

The other thing that comes to mind -- at it ties in with the ballast-tool idea -- is that the "blade" is the width of a tie crib, and the tool might be used in helping to clean out cribs, say, when switch rods needed work.

Could it have been used to paper up grain doors or other similar use? Knock frozen loads off the side of hoppers, or lever chutes open from a safe position? Helping ash dumping when no water is available?

Note the wear patterns on the tool. That should be a guide for the knowledgeable.

It looks like a cement finisher's "funny trowel" viewed from the top side, but I could be mistaken...

Unfortunately, the fact that it has been collected by a railroad museum doesn't necessarily mean that it's use is specific to railroads.

It looks like a finisher's margin trowel, but normally those are 6 - 8 inches long over all. I've seen trowels 30" and 36" long for concrete, but they had handles at about one third along their length so the cement finisher could put adequate weight on them. This item has the handle, if that's what it is, flying out past the end. I don't think it's a trowel.

I'm gonna go with;

College Fraternity Initiation Tool, as in "Thank You Sir May I Have Another"

See "Animal House" the movie for proper use instructions....



Seems too flimsy to move any ballast around with and too long to control for concrete work.


Guess #2 is a really serious Horse Fly Swatter....



Interested to know the real answer.


Cheers, Kevin

How about a heated paddle for working lead for metal roof repair? Like a soldering iron except flat.

The wood end is a handle. I apologize for not getting some better angles on the picture. The museum doesn't know exactly what it is. Someone in our recent tour group thought it was a ballast tool, but it's big and clumsy and I can't see how you would manage ballast stone with it. It's thin metal and flimsy.

I'm thinking it may be a tool used in casting and working sand. Maybe to strike off the top of a pattern box or touch up flat areas of a large mold.

I like that. Or placed on the flat floor of a cavity to catch the crumbs, so to speak, while an adjacent vertical surface was troweled smooth.

I think a diner cook could flip about ten eggs at once with it!

Keith

I was going to suggest it was a competitor of the "Bishop's Coupling Knife" but decided I didn't want to go there... well, maybe.

I think we all know that people will call just about anything a "railroad tool/item/collectible" if they think they can double the price or tax write-off, or sucker some unsuspecting collector into paying lots of money for a fake............

Back when I worked on a tie gang we had a home made tool like this. It was used to get any rocks or other junk out from under the rail before we out a tie plate in.