American Railway Express Scale

 Recently, I acquired a 60 pound scale from Ebay that has a plate mounted to the wooden base. The plate is inscribed, "A.R.E. 55428."

The seller of the scale believed that A.R.E. stood for "American Railway Express." Unless proven otherwise, I am inclined to agree with him. One possible piece of evidence to dispute this claim, however, is the patent date of 1906 on the scale. The American Railway Express was not founded until 1918 and was a forerunner to the Railway Express Agency. However, the 1906 patent would have been in force in 1918, which could have been the date of manufacture.

Readers of this article might be surprised to find the focus is more about the Industrial Revolution and patents, than about railroads. In my research about this scale, I uncovered labyrinthine stories of several scale manufacturing companies, their founding, and apparent patent infringements.

My plan was to do a cosmetic restoration on the scale. Since I could not locate a manufacturer name without dis-assembling the entire scale, I had to do a bit of detective work.

My scale has a poplar base. In my research, I found that Landers, Frary and Clark of Connecticut made a scale that looked just like mine, with a wooden base. There were only a handful of scale manufacturers during the early 20th century, and I thought I had found the correct one.

I sent the metal components out for bead blasting. When they returned, I painted them the original colors. I began re-assembling the scale. As I cleaned up an access plate that covers the regulating screw, I discovered this:

At first, I mistakenly thought that the patented plate was made by Triner and used on a Landers, Frary and Clark scale. Then, I discovered Triner Scale.

The patent for this scale was granted in 1906.

Obviously, there were enough similarities between different companies' scale designs to cause them potential legal trouble with each other. The fact that James Triner was a former employee of the Pelouze Scale Company would have put him at greater risk with his former boss. Like today, however, companies didn't bring legal action unless a competitor was adversely affecting their bottom line enough to justify the cost of suing them. It was a matter of dollars and cents.

The Triner Scale in its new home.