Seven or eight years ago, my wife and daughter found this at an estate sale just a couple blocks from our house. Embossed with the PRR keystone, it was in pretty rough shape. The lady of the house had removed the lamp pot and globe and used it for a hanging planter on her back porch. Needless to say, many years of being filled with dirt and liberally watered had rotted out nearly all of the 3-1/2 inch diameter underside. My inclination was to just chuck it, but my daughter thought it could be semi-repaired, so we made a bit of an effort.
I cut out the badly corroded bottom and, without much luck, was looking for some sort of galvanized end-cap or metal that we could use to fashion a new bottom. Fabricating a new underside from sheet stock wasn't going to be easy. We soon discovered, however, that the plastic lid from a 40-oz. peanut-butter jar fit nearly perfectly. A bit of wire-brushing, a shot of flat-black paint, and a couple dabs of Loctite Power-Grab had the replacement "bottom" in place.
A replacement globe proved easier to find than I'd anticipated. A visit to a local lighting store turned up nothing that would fit, but they directed us to W. T. Kirkman of Ramona, California, which is a pretty great resource for these sorts of things. We quickly found a reproduction globe and sent off an order. I seem to remember that they offered it in red, green, and clear glass (we chose red).
So then the problem was how to light it. It originally had a kerosene lamp in it with a key to raise the wick as required, but we couldn't find any sort of oil lamp that would fit properly. I think Kirkman sold something that might have worked, but I didn't really want to mess with kerosene and the related mess. We moved on to trying to find a small cordless electric light that might fit. We stumbled on this small camp lantern at Walmart made by Ozark Trail that fit nearly perfectly. A four-LED configuration, two brightness settings, requiring three AA cells, you just need to open the lamp, turn it on, slide it back down, and you're on your way. I've actually used this thing a few times when walking the dog(s) in the dark during winter. It can be a bit zen-like when snow's falling.
Working on the roof for Parlor Flats while trying to date a Flyer set that turned up recently. My library of Flyer catalogs stops in 1937, but this set looks like it's probably 1938 or 1939. It has those curly-que couplers, which I seem to recall had a short run just before the war. Should know more soon.
Here's a link to W. T. Kirkman if you're looking for lantern bits:
https://lanternnet.com/
