Baggage carts

This photo is from about 1971, My father was delighted to do what he loved and even more happy to do it in style. He is pictured here with one of many baggage carts he resurrected from the Bragdon railroad station in Rochester NY.

I was just a boy and too young to go with my father to obtain these railroad baggage carts.The story as i recall was my father had a friend who worked for the city of Rochester and he told my father that they were cleaning out the catacombs under the Bragdon Station rail yard located downtown near Bulls Head, many of you may know it as Nick Tahou's Hots.

The catacombs I believe were actually the former Rochester subway tunnels. The Tunnels contained quite a bit of discarded items. My father returned with about 12 or more early 20th century baggage carts. I believe the 5 carts still in my possession were from the early 1900's due to their having steel spoke hard rubber coated wheels. Over the years my father sold off a number of the old carts, one or two yielded it's wheels to be refitted on docks made for the lake, others have been reworked into flower carts. Of the 5 I still have each has been rebuilt with new lumber, but for the most part look as rustic as when they came home from the subway tunnels.

Over the years I have seen quite a variety of these baggage carts some nicer than others, some original and some restored. I will post photos of some i found nice or unique.

The above baggage cart is on display at the Forney Transportation museum in Denver CO. and if you look carefully it has a mechanism to raise the platform with a large crank.

Another cart on display at the Forney Museum.

the above two pictures are from carts on display at Griffith park in LA California

This picture is random from the web, not sure about the hay wagon style sides? The deck and sides do not appear to be original.

From " The Casey Jones Museum, not too far from Nashville Tenn.