Posted 2 years ago
fishingfever
(1 item)
I am trying to figure out what the background might be on this stop sign. It came from my grandfather's estate. He did work for the Wabash railroad, and I have other railroad stuff from his estate (if that helps). From looking at it, it is on a swing type bracket, it is two pieces of metal put together (double sided), and even has a rubber "stopper" on one side. I am assuming that the stopper was used to keep it from hitting something when the sign was swung in one direction. The letters are also embossed in the metal (sign is all metal). I have looked all over the internet but could not find any stop sign with this type of shape. Any thoughts or information would be greatly appreciated.
Maybe a train knocked it off of s school bus.
Very cool. It appears to have remains of yellow color on the sign. I would suggest that it's prior to 1954. After that stop signs were red. As for what it came from..not sure. Still cool.
https://www.myparkingsign.com/MPS/article_history-of-stop-sign.aspx
Thanks for the info. I will keep looking!
This link shows an old bus swing sign, but doesn't look anything like yours.
https://history.fandom.com/wiki/School_Bus_stop_arms
In the long long ago there were traffic signals that had a swing arm that said either Stop of Go and I believe this is one of those. I do not think it is a school bus sign. That was very uncommon until recently.
Thanks for that comment. I will check into that next. Cheers.
Fort, I believe those folded up & down.
I think fortapache is close with his traffic signal guess, but will need to take a little more time to confirm it...stay tuned y'all... :-)
I was thinking the same thing FortA, but could not find the right info. I was also thinking along the lines of the old turn signal semaphore.
Ok, closing this one out. I found a few photos online of something very similar claiming it to be a school bus stop sign (doesn't always mean someone else is correct, but found 3 different ones). One of them that I found had the exact same mounting bracket on it that my sign has (was going to post a photo but couldn't figure out how). Also, found an old advertisement with a photo of a bus with a stop sign on the side that looked very, very close to the one I have. Guess that will be good enough for me! I do appreciate all the comments. Cheers.
I will now confirm your likely "school bus" guess fishingfever -- I sent the link to your showing to a different (specifically traffic signal/sign related) forum I belong to, and the responders there said it enough to satisfy me. There were actual (very, very early, I have seen examples) stationary traffic signal lights that had similar STOP/GO flags but this is not one of those, its hinge part (if nothing else) confirms that. (because it obviously moves/moved the wrong way than they did) School buses that would have used this would have came along decades later, after other folks had otherwise started to invent "motor vehicles", then "traffic control", then eventually "school buses" in turn. FUN ITEM anyways about it?!!
:-) :-) :-) :-)
Oops -- forgot to add the general age range of this sign is likely 1930's-50's, I'd tend to believe more towards the earlier end of that myself, but that's just me. :-)