Indianapolis Union Railway Company - Indiana 1930

Beautifully engraved specimen Gold Bond Certificate from the Indianapolis Union Railway Company dated 1930. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of steam locomotives in a train yard. This item is over 76 years old.


Certificate Vignette

The Indianapolis Union Railway Company was founded in the early 1850s. During the twentieth century the company was operated by a consortium of railroads. These included the Pennsylvania Railroad; the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway (Big Four); the Nickel Plate Railroad; the Monon Railroad; and the Illinois Central Railroad.

The Indianapolis Union Railway Company owned and maintained the Union Railway Passenger Station (Indianapolis Union Station) and approximately one mile of track around the facility. In 1882 the company leased railway equipment, track, and facilities from the Indianapolis Belt Railroad and Stockyards Company. The Belt Railroad line covered fourteen miles of track from North Indianapolis to Brightwood on the eastern edge of the city. Industries along the line included the Indianapolis Stockyards Company, the Westinghouse Lamp Company, the Imperial Drop Forge Company, and the Carter Lee Lumber Company.

Around 1920 the Indianapolis Union Railway Company began a two-phase project to elevate the Union Station tracks and the Belt Railroad. The first phase, the elevation of the Union Station tracks, was completed by 1924. The second phase, approved in April 1925, involved elevation of the Belt track “from a point near West New York Street to a point near English Avenue, and from East Michigan Street to a point near East Thirteenth Street.” (Annual Report. Indianapolis Union Railway Company, 1925). The project included construction of new bridges in Marion County, including a bridge over the White River near Raymond Street and Bluff Road. Construction of elevated track continued into the early 1930s.

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About Specimens

Specimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".

Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.

These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity over the past several years.