Railroads Gallery
A National Cigar Museum Exclusive
by ©Tony Hyman
Beautiful example of a railroad box from the late 1890’s. Cigars made in Fact. 1521, 21st NY, a small short-lived Union factory in the Southern Tier of NY.
[6224]
Another late 1890’s railroad box, these made by Doyle & Smith, Oneonta, NY, in Fact. 424, 21st Dist.
[6225]
Dramatic full color label appeared on a box of cigars made in Fact. 48, Massachusetts, in the late 1870’s,
[6222]
Perhaps the finest, most detailed, gold on black label was printed by an unidentified Dayton, OH, printer (only the first name John is readable) in the 1880s for the Lenox Cigar Factory number 202, 10th District of Ohio. A stunning curator’s favorite.
[8560]
Box of 100 offered by Charles & Co. in the early 1880s. Cigars made by one of the 1,000+ small factories in Brooklyn, that of W.W. Haslam, whose 4 rollers worked in Fact. 999, 1st tax District located at 51 Myrtle Ave.
[6221]
According to the label D.H. McAlpin & Co. made these cheap cheroots packed in boxes of 250 some time between 1898-1901, though Directories of 1893 and 1905 don’t list the company or their
Fact. 22, 3rd District NYC.
[6237]
Beautiful 1900 style label depicting a parlor car was still being used by William Knoch in 1926. One more example why style of label is not a reliable indicator of the actual age of a box.
[6232]
![Most desirable to many collectors are those boxes which name and picture a particular railroad. The owner of Fact. 2310 in the 9th tax district of PA
is unknown. Box, label and edging style suggest
a mid 1880 use.
[6239]](Railroads_files/captionimage_1.png)
Vanity label used by Ferguson & Co. of Waverly, NY, depicts the Lehigh Valley Railroad that roared through that Southern Tier town. Fact. 239, 21st NY.
The train got the “black diamond express” nickname because of its anthracite coal cargo.
[6492]
This photo-like depiction honors the line that passed near the Albany, NY, factory of prominent cigar maker G.Van Slyke & Horton. Fact. 219,
14th tax Dist., NY, in 1896.
[6240]
This 1943 tri-color box with its small vignette honors the Michigan Central’s “Niagara Falls Route” Cigars by W.R. Pettet in Saginaw, Michigan’s Factory 282.
[6252]
One of the nation’s better known railroads thanks to Penn Station, this rather plain box featuring the line’s logo. Cigars by Powell & Goldstein, Oneida, NY, whose 100+ rollers were responsible for dozens of brands. Unused pre 1910 box.
[6242]
California giant A. Sensenbrenner, packed their popular 15¢ SANTA FE Patties under a number of brand names including this railroad.
Fact. 110, 6th Dist. Calif, 1945.
[6250]
A. Sensenbrenner packed cigars for more than one California railroad. Fact. 110, 6th Dist. Calif, 1954.
[6247]
One of the three most common railroad brands, these were originally made by Binghamton’s
Hull Grummond Factory 227, 21st Dist. NY.
This 25/up paper label can is from 1923.
[6265]
The most frequently seen box versions are the NW12/4s and the NW10/5s. The 12 box was made by Hull, Grummond in 1913. The box on the right was made in the late 1920’s under contract by PA factory 583 in East Prospect, PA. Note the
dropping of the hyphen on the later box. [6267]
Earliest type of engine depicted on an OVERLAND box, this from Canada. Very rare and desirable, this was made in Factory 12, IRD 17 by J.A. Hirsch
in Montreal sometime between 1909 and 1911.
Not in the NCM collection.
Another very rare version of the brand.
Dates and users unknown.
Not in the NCM collection.
In the U.S. the brand was made by D. Emil Klein Fact. 63, 2nd NYC, for Boston specialty retail chain
S.S. Pierce. This steam train flanked by vignettes of Western scenes is the oldest known US version
of the brand. 1923.
[6255]
Vignettes were dropped in later versions. This is one of the most common of all railroad brands. Still made by Klein at 444 E. 91st Street in NYC. 1946.
[6258}
Tin tri-color sign depicting the second of the OVERLAND trains is distinctive. 18” x 24”.
[P80081]
Colorful 1920’s cardboard 5 pack without vignettes.
Not in the NCM collection.
By the mid 1950’s a diesel engine graced the label. Klein was out of business. Cigars were made in Waitt & Bond’s Scranton factory #1031. 1954.
[6259]
J. Whorley Neff & Co., Red Lion, PA, produced this nice looking railroad box in the mid-1930’s in
Fact. 533. 1st Dist. PA. Nice looking presentation for cheap cigars.
[6245]
Top brand of previous. Horseshoe Curve is an engineering marvel through the Allegheny Mountains west of Altoona PA built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1850s and now a National Historic Landmark.
[6246]
Cigar poster featuring Round Knob Cigars named for a mountain peak in North Carolina. Poster measures 16” x 20” and dates from the last quarter of the 19th century.
[P80039]
Round Knob was part of the scenery on the Western North Carolina Railroad “Land of the Sky” route.
The train is depicted on the cigar poster.
[P80037]
Attractive mid-1880’s box in beautiful condition honors the head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, credited as being the oldest national labor union in the U.S.
[6231]
The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen is featured on this 1917 box made by Frey & Conway, in Newark, NY, Factory 842, 21st District. These two boxes honor two of eight separate unions covering
various railroad employees.
[6235]
One of the three common railroad brands. I don’t know when the brand was created, but this one was made in 1938 in Fact. 1171, Dallastown 1st PA by Druck & Co. Note the edging pictures a train.
[6261]
New versions are box wrapped, easily recognizable by the different edging. Made under contract in 1954 in Fact. 1289, Dallastown 1st PA by Peeler & Son.
[6264]
Not particularly interesting 1920’s packaging.
Not in the NCM collection.
[0000]
This tin 50/up is the more common version of
this brand’s tin packaging.
[3145]
Cigar label for a railroad line. A box for this brand is not known. Not in the NCM collection.
Small shallow glass ashtray lifted from one of the Southwest’s most famous rail lines.
[6270]
Metal rail shipping trunks for BUCK, CREMO, KING HERALD and others turn up regularly in the antiques market. Property of the Company (usually American Tobacco) to be returned, they were abandoned as the brands were discontinued. Roughly 1910-1938.
[12099]
Interior of previous. Trunks were designed
to hold a few thousand cigars.
Not in the NCM collection.
[12262]
The end of the CREMO trunk showing American Tobacco’s claim that the brand was the
“Largest seller in the world.”
[12261]
More than 2,000 cigars could be shipped in one of these trunks. Neither of the two trunks seen here
is in the NCM collection.
[w0098]
Beautiful condition 1884 box depicting a railroad map of the day (pictured in the introduction above). Cigars made in Fact. 32 (state obliterated).
A gem of a box. [6227]
The famous Pullman car was depicted on this 1953 box holding cigars by the Pullman Cigar Co. in Roslindale, Mass., Fact. 347 Massachusetts.
[6253]
Longer trips and more travelers led George Pullman, in 1857, to invent the sleeping car. People had been snoozing on trains since the first engine hit the rails, but ordinary passenger cars were uncomfortable, and until Pullman, not designed for sleep. Cars that helped customers get a good night’s rest were a dream come true for the long distance traveler. It wasn’t long before the wealthy were ordering their own custom built Pullman cars complete with beds, bars and bathtubs. Hundreds of other rail-related inventions improved the safety, convenience, and comfort of rail travel. Things we take for granted today, like uniform time zones, also came about in part because of the demands of transcontinental scheduling.
[6253] PULLMAN car illustration from cigar box used by the Pullman Cigar Company in Roslindale, Mass., 1953.
PRIVATE CAR label not in the NCM collection.
As America grew, and the farmlands of the Midwest and West were developed, the railroads accompanied them, reaching all the way to the Pacific Coast only four years after the Civil War. Everywhere railroads went they carried more than tobacco leaf and finished cigars; they also transported traveling salesmen by the thousands, then tens of thousands, taking orders for the consumer goods those trains could easily bring to the frontiers.
The impact of railroads on American life is difficult for people today to comprehend. Railroads made possible the safe speedy spread of goods and people in a manner never before seen. They enabled adventurous men and woman on their never-ending search for greener pastures. The rails, roads, and canals led to opportunity and the possibility of a new life. Cigarmaking was frequently a one-man business and cigarmakers notoriously footloose, so the steam train became their golden chariot in their search for new and heavier smokers. Unfortunately for them, the railroads also enabled the larger cigar companies to put their representatives on the road and big-factory mass produced products to compete with those small local factories.
Like mail, rail shipments were Federally protected.
Tags were enclosed in envelopes and tied to trunks and crates which were also marked in chalk
New England’s first of many rail lines began operations in 1835 just in time to help spread Connecticut seed leaf, the country’s first high quality cigar wrapper. Before the Civil War engulfed the nation in 1861, growers in Massachusetts, New York, Kentucky and Maryland were using railroads, canals and the Mississippi river to ship cigar leaf to New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans and other cigar manufacturing centers. More than 2,000 cigar factories were in operation at the beginning of the War.
The search for cheaper shipping
Experiments had been going on for a few years when, in 1832, steam driven railroads were proven once-and-for-all to be fiscally practical. A coal powered steam engine on the two-year-old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad hauled 50 tons over a distance of 40 miles at a speed of 12 to 15 mph. The engine burned $16 worth of coal compared to the $33 and 42 horses it had taken to move that much freight over the same tracks the previous year. The timing couldn't have been better for the growing U.S. cigar industry.
This ad from the New York Evening Star for March 27, 1838, gives a hint of how well developed steam railroads had become less than a decade after the first commercial freight and passenger line was established. The train lines usually connected to ferries, horse-drawn stage coaches or river boats for longer journeys. The country’s longest railroad was 167 miles in South Carolina. The use of corner vignettes in early 19th century newspapers made it easier for readers to find the type of ad they sought.
1835 magazine
[12645] Since most men smoked, it wasn’t unusual for a train to have more than one car set aside exclusively for smokers, complete with white-coated attendants ready to offer a cigar or libation. The smoking cars on the Chicago Limited of the 1890’s offered bathtubs, a barber, and luxuriously upholstered chairs about which one writer claimed “the traveller who cannot be comfortable in one of them is hard indeed to satisfy.” The cars were also well stocked with the latest copies of JUDGE, HARPER’S, LESLIE’S, and other weekly newspapers. For those with more time, books were available, described by a HARPER’S writer as being “in striking contrast to those vapid and lurid tales that the book peddler on an ordinary train recommends with so much voluble assurance.” Smoking cars were required by law on British trains way back in 1869.
The second half of the 1800’s was the era of huge government land grants to railroads to encourage expansion into the West and Midwest. Usually the Federal government gave railroad companies alternate sections of public land, twenty to fifty miles worth for every mile of track they laid. Railroads sold these lands to speculators and homesteaders, often recruited from Europe. As so often happens, one technological or social change breeds others. As railroads developed so did commerce and the spread of increasingly mass produced consumer goods (including cigars) and the printing technologies to package them. The land give-aways and gradual population shifts created demand for the development of communications, newspapers, and maps.
Given their role in spreading cigars nationwide, it’s no wonder railroads and railroad themes decorated cigar boxes by the score. Just about every post-Civil War rail line in America was depicted, usually by small local cigarmakers in one of the towns the line passed through. It’s not the intent of this exhibit to provide a history of those railroads, but rather to enable the visitor to see some of the variety.
