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Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:51 pm
by mister sour
I NO LONGER HAVE ANY OF THESE KEYS. ITS ILLEGAL TO OWN CERTAIN KEYS, DUE TO THEIR USE TO SECURE SWITCH LOCKS ON MAJOR RAILWAYS
Hi everyone,
As most of you know, I am obsessed with trying to acquire all of the Environmental Rail Road keys. These keys typically have round bows with a hole in the upper middle, a serial number on one side, a three digit number on the other, they have 3 sections that are offset and make up the keys "bitting" and are usually cast out of steel or brass.
Rail roads prefer the 3 disc versions of this padlock because they operate while frozen, clogged with mud, wet, impacted by dirt or debris, etc. If they used a padlock with more discs, turning of a corrupted cylinder would be harder, and may cause the key to break due, to the added friction of the additional discs.
I have never been given a conclusive answer to how many RR keys there are. But I have a 112, so we can assume for now that there are atleast 12.
Im going to include pictures of keys. I ask that these pictures not be copied or shared with other sites. These photos are from my personal collection.
I hope you enjoy!!
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Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:53 pm
by Riyame
Damn nice! You are well on your way to getting them all.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:01 pm
by mister sour
Oh yeah, I have many, many spares. I am open to offers/trades.
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No Longer in My Possession

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:47 pm
by MrPharmer2012

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:51 am
by mister sour
MrPharmer2012 wrote:Email this seller on ebay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SARGENT-AND-GRE ... 2eba081961

been there, done that.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:03 am
by Oldfast
Note to self: Keep a lookout for Sours' keys...

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 2:01 am
by mister sour
102's are available. All keys say UPRR on back.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 11:10 am
by macgng
I don't know if I asked u already, but do u have an extra 107? I have a hand made 107, would like a real one. If anyone has one let me know.

Sour: how many "depths" are there on each disc, you could figure out how many possible keys there are from that. 4 depths in 3 positions would be 64 keys. But if there are only 3 depths there should only be 9 keys.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:14 pm
by mister sour
macgng wrote:I don't know if I asked u already, but do u have an extra 107? I have a hand made 107, would like a real one. If anyone has one let me know.

Sour: how many "depths" are there on each disc, you could figure out how many possible keys there are from that. 4 depths in 3 positions would be 64 keys. But if there are only 3 depths there should only be 9 keys.

i talked with an informative gent, and he said there are 25 possible keys, but they exclude the bittings that would be to easy to pick. He also stated there are three cuts per disc.
And no extra 107s. I scored a brass one from ebay.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 9:38 am
by macgng
three cuts per disc plus a 0 depth, would make it 4, so my calculation of 64 was correct, minus the "easy" bittings yields the 25 u stated. very interesting.

is there a "100" or does it start at 101?

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 11:06 am
by mister sour
macgng wrote:three cuts per disc plus a 0 depth, would make it 4, so my calculation of 64 was correct, minus the "easy" bittings yields the 25 u stated. very interesting.

is there a "100" or does it start at 101?

i dunno. wish i did.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 8:42 pm
by mister sour
supposidly abloy made keys for these padlocks b4 the cast steel keys. But they discontinued them because they were to flimsy and had a tendency so break off in the padlock. i've met several collectors whom have independantly shared this with me. I will get pix in a lil to help validate this therory.
If anyone has a 103 key, i will trade ya for it.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:15 am
by MacGyver101
mister sour wrote:i talked with an informative gent, and he said there are 25 possible keys, but they exclude the bittings that would be to easy to pick.

Just based on the photos, it looks like there are only three possible cuts: 0°, 45° and 90°. If so, that would be ( 3^3 ), or 27 possible keys.

I'm assuming, though, that S&G wouldn't allow keys with the same cut in all three positions: not only because it would be easier to pick, but (probably more importantly) because those keys could be removed from the lock in any position -- which would both defeat the key-retaining feature, and also be annoying to the user.

If so, that eliminates three keys: (0°-0°-0°), (45°-45°-45°) and (90°-90°-90°)... or whatever cut numbers S&G has assigned to those angles.

I think that leaves you with 24 possible keys?

Here's the patent diagrams for the cylinder and lock body, if anyone's curious.

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:37 am
by macgng
yes 3 depths in 3 positions is 3^3, dunno why i thought it was only 9. didnt think about being able to remove the key if the cuts are the same. now we only need to see some pix of keys with higher numbers and we could possibly prove this theory

Re: Sargent & Greenleaf Rail Road Environmental Padlock Keys

PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 12:23 pm
by mister sour
macgng wrote:yes 3 depths in 3 positions is 3^3, dunno why i thought it was only 9. didnt think about being able to remove the key if the cuts are the same. now we only need to see some pix of keys with higher numbers and we could possibly prove this theory

we must also keep in mind that there are key bittings that would still allow for for the key to be removed. gotta chalk those up too as keys that most likely dont exist.