Fantastic Personalized Railroad Eagle by PS LOK – G219
The popularity of the so called 3rd Reich railroad eagle within the collecting community couldn’t be in more demand than what collectors have seen in the last few years. Though that seems to be also true with generally all Nazi era memorabilia across the board. These striking displays added to one’s collection certainly is one of the draws for history enthusiasts. While there were probably 100’s of these eagles cast by nearly a couple dozen foundry’s, there never seems to be enough to quench the demand of collectors today. The eagle in this offering is the most common size at 600mm, but that’s were this fantastic display just starts.
The obverse of this 600mm (24”) LOK Pinter casting firm rail eagle projects an uncleaned surface in which a rich dark patina has developed over it. As you no doubt have already noticed, this eagle has been engraved with the names, ranks, and what appears to be the home towns of 10 soldiers which had served with the Luftwaffe during WWII. Additionally, upon the swastika are the words Afrika, Italien, Belgien, Frankreich. These are the old terms which stood for Africa, Italy, Belgium, and France. Instantly a couple possibilities come to mind at to why this eagle was engraved in this manner. The first possibility being that this was a tribute to the close friends and fellow comrade soldiers who served together in the same fighting unit all the way through the war, in 4 different European / Africa zones of combat. Or perhaps it could have been that these Luft soldiers were POW’s interned together after the surrender in Tunisia, at the round up in North Africa in May of 1943. Either way it is an absolutely stunning to have such a fantastic personalization on this eagle! This example was most likely affixed to a coach car, as the reverse shows 4 large sheered studs and the evidenced of the threads that they bore. The left wing stud shows a bit of adhesive that was probably used at one time to secure and display this war trophy. Lastly, ironical scrawled is the word Hitler which was at some time scratched into the reverse above to the right of that same stud. This would make a wonderful exciting research project which would no doubt add some history to this to this outstanding 3rd Reich artifact.
I’ve had a slew of railroad eagles over the years, though this one rates in a class of it’s own. SOLD