Fake Builders Plates II

Builders plates are castings or sheet metal plates that are attached to locomotives and other rolling stock to indicate the manufacturer, date of production, manufacturing number, and other information. A number of counterfeit builders plates have been produced. See introductory page on fake builders plates.

In 1985, a company called Railroad Replicas produced a brochure offering various castings of builders plates. These were advertised as being made of a resin composite, which would make them obviously different from the real ones which were made of brass or iron. But there is still the possibility of a novice or non-collector being fooled. UPDATE: We have now been informed that these were made of brass also, costing $110 more, so the possibility of these being represented as authentic is very high. Scans of this brochure are now available. Click on the thumbnails below. Be aware that these scans are *large* -- about 200K+ each -- so download time on a modem connection will be slow. See note below on image resizing.

Note that a project is underway to further document fake builders plates. Updates will be posted on this website, so check back.

Image Resizing: If you use Internet Explorer and have "automatic image resizing" turned on, the larger scans may shrink to the size of your browser window, which will probably make the print unreadable. To turn this off, go to [Tools] [Internet Options] [Advanced], scroll down to the Multimedia section, and uncheck "Enable Automatic Image Resizing". Click [Apply].

Thanks to Rob Hoffer for providing a copy of the original brochure.