Railroad Stocks

Boy, it sure does look the same! That's clearly a variation on the same lithograph. Maybe both were by the same printing house. The imprint on the stock is "Hackett Print." but I don't know anything about them. I going to guess the cover is the earlier usage.

I suspect that this wood engraving was the origin of both the engraving on your stock certificate and the railroad propaganda cover

An awesome vignette on this one:

It sure is! My only advice is the same as I gave another member on a similar topic -- try doing your initial scan at 300dpi or higher. Then you can reduce from that. The very fine lines of an engraving create strange moire patterns on most scans at anything less than 300 dpi resolution. Believe me, I've done a lot of experimenting.

Just thought I'd throw a few more scans up before bed...




Love the NYC cityscape on this one.

Greg, here's a 600 dpi scan. Had to resize it a couple of times. The 200Kb size limit is a bummer.
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Hmmm, higher resolution usually takes care of that issue. Scanning might be a good topic for a separate thread on a general forum. There are filters and settings that may make a difference. Are your scans set for "photo" or "text"?

Photo.

Actually, I think the Image Optimizer is not doing you any favors.

I just found this topic this morning. I don't have a problem keeping file sizes within the SCF limit, but the SCF 600 pixel file dimension limit is an unfortunate restriction for stock certificates, given their physical size.

This is an old scan from 2001 on a Linotype Hell scanner (Saphir model, I think). I think the scanner's native maximum resolution was 1000dpi. Not bad for a scanner purchased in the 1990s, but scanners were much slower in those days. So I was doing most of my scanning at half the native resolution, 500dpi and that is what this certificate was scanned at.

This is an 1880s Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railway certificate with close-ups.

FYI, there are only image size limits if you are uploading to SCF. If you are linking to the image on an external site or storage, it can be as large as you want it to be. It may reduced responsively for display purposes, but readers can always click on the image to see it at full size.

Thanks for posting, HoosRec! I'd love to see other RR stocks/bonds if you have any. I have a horribly trimmed copy of that CCC&I certificate. Yours looks much nicer.

I agree, the file size limit is something of an issue. But I expect the original intent was for images of stamps and it's probably just fine for that purpose. I'm a little hesitant about using third-party image servers because of the Photobucket disaster. At least you know that scans will stay in place they're posted on the host server.

Thanks, revenuecollector, for explaining the upload size issue. I hadn't yet realized that clicking on displayed images might display larger original versions in some cases.

GregAlex, I don't have many, but I have a handful of Indiana certificates I can upload when time allows. I've been exploring here at SCF and have seen the evidence of the Photobucket situation. I've had a Flickr Pro account for years, but that's primarily for a specialized Indiana History project. Besides, Flickr has gone through Yahoo! and then Verizon and now to SmugMug ownership and who knows where it will be in a few years. Also, I was a participant in the StampWants/Bidstart/Stanley Gibbons evolution of that site wherein the forums package was replaced by the owner and we lost all of our discussions and uploaded images in that transition. No guarantees whichever way we go. So I keep multiple backups and hope for the best.

Tom

Here's one that HoosRec may enjoy, from the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad. The certificate is unissued but it's circa 1851. No revenues attached, but I really like the engraving.