RIGHT ON TRACK
Meticulously lined up on shelf upon shelf in a couple of rooms in Chad Harpole’s house are 275 to 300 railroad lanterns.
The brakeman’s or marker lantern colors – which come in five varieties – are attention grabbing. Clear/white, red, yellow, green and cobalt blue. They are all there, shiny to the eye as ever.
The pieces are the pride and joy of Harpole’s railroadiana collection that he’s spent the last 27 years building. The lanterns conjure up memories of his childhood.
Growing up in the 1980s, Harpole’s dad owned a small pharmacy, the only one in the quaint central Kentucky town. A state trooper would stop into the store often and gab about his antique train and railroad collection. All that talk about the rail lines piqued Harpole’s interest.
“I never lived in a house with a basement, so I was never able to get into model trains,” said Harpole, who has his collection spread across two rooms in his house and basement.
Instead, at age 12, Harpole started collecting railroadiana – which refers to artifacts of current or former operating railways. Over the years, Harpole went from collecting lanterns and
