1956 Handlan Catalog

In 1956 the Handlan Company -- makers of railroad lighting and other industrial equipment -- published their 100th anniversary catalog. Up to this point the company had had a long and illustrious history, having been originally founded as the M.M. Buck company and later taken over by A.H. Handlan. Over the years the company went through a number of name changes, all of which incorporated the Handlan name. Handlan lamps and lanterns were well-represented on America's railroads and are well-known among today's collectors. See examples of their tall globe lanterns and one of their short-globe lanterns on our web site. Also see our tour of the 1902 Handlan factory.

Sadly, by 1956 the railroad lighting industry was already in decline, paralleling the railroad industry of that era. The Handlan Company lasted another couple of decades or so, but at the time of their 1956 Anniversary, their best years were already behind them. In the final years, the company tried to stay in business by producing items for the hobbyist market but went out of business in the early 1990's.

Below are links to individual, scanned pages of the 1956 Handlan catalog, provided courtesy of Tim Eizinger. In order to maintain detail, the scans are large -- about 30 to 90 KB each -- and will take some download time on a slow internet connection. (See Note below).

Internet Explorer Note:If you use Internet Explorer and the scans display as too small to read, this may be due to the "automatic image resizing" option being enabled. To turn this off, look at the very top menu bar of your browser and click on [Tools][Internet Options][Advanced]. Scroll down to "multimedia" and make sure that "Enable Automatic Image Resizing" is unchecked. Then click "Apply" and "OK".