In October Rich held a lighted match to an antique railroad lantern’s wick. In seconds the lantern gave its first light in over 80 years but couldn’t hold a candle to a modern-day lantern.

“My grandfather, Harry Patterson, was an engineer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. He died in 1949 and somehow, I ended up with his old Dietz Vesta lantern. It gathered dust in a closet for decades. Then, it hung as a memento in our woodstove room. One day I decided to clean it up and see if it would work,” said Rich.

It was fun seeing the railroad lantern work, but its glow was anemic, so Rich drained its tank and designated it a family heirloom. All this brought to mind the true story of Kate Shelley of iowa and her heroic crossing of a railroad bridge over the Des Moines River. A storm had swelled a creek, a smaller train tumbled into the water, and Kate, hearing the cries for help, braved the storm and dark of night to alert the station to stop the Midnight Express. Kate Shelley and The Midnight Express. The story, introduced by Levar Burton and retold by Brian Dennehy, was written by Margaret K. Wetterer with illustrations by Karen Ritz.

Being Prepared Means Having Backup Lights

The lantern got us thinking about how humanity survived the cold dark nights of northern winters. It wasn’t easy. For hundreds of years the only lighting sources were open fires, candles, and smoky lamps that burned whale or seal oil. For most of human history people endured darkness punctuated by tiny flames.

That started changing when Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879, but by 1925 only half of American homes had electricity.  Many families continued using lanterns for primary lighting until a century ago.

For years the best lamp oil came from whales, but it was expensive. John D. Rockefeller made a huge change in American lighting by finding oil and refining it into kerosene. This was before cars, and gasoline was a waste byproduct of kerosene production.

Grandpa’s old railroad lantern burns kerosene. So do many modern decorative oil lamps.

Electrification

Eventually nearly all American homes were electrified and Edison’s incandescent bulb ruled the night for about a century. They work but have a major flaw. Most of the electricity they consume is converted into heat, rather than light. That changed with the coming of compact fluorescent bulbs in the 1980’s. Although they had many flaws, fluorescents transform electricity into light efficiently

Compact fluorescent bulbs were only on the market a short while. Soon light emitting diodes, or LED, bulbs almost completely eliminated both compact fluorescent and incandescent lights. They’re efficient, inexpensive, and hardly ever burn out.

Preparing for Power Outages

Evolution in lighting

Modern electric lights have a problem. They need electricity. Should a storm knock out power lines, homes go dark. What to do? Follow the Scout motto: Be prepared!

Grandpa’s old lantern had one strong advantage over modern bulbs. It doesn’t need electricity to work. We keep a modern kerosene lamp and a gallon of kerosene, stored separately from the house, ready in case of a power outage but we also have these types of emergency lights:

White Gas Coleman style lantern. Ours produces lots more light than a kerosene lamp but is a bit touchy to get started.

Candles.  They are handy, cheap, and commonly available but only produce about as much light as a kerosene lantern. Like liquid fuel lanterns candles present a fire hazard and we prefer not using them in the house.

Battery powered lights. We keep several battery lights in the house along with spare charged batteries. Because their bulbs are either compact fluorescent or LED, they last hours on a single battery charge and produce enough light to read or cook by. There’s no combustion so they are fire safe.

Many people install backup generators to provide continuous electricity when the grid fails. Some need these for medical reasons. Most don’t. They are expensive and normally power comes back on in a few hours. We choose to have much less expensive lanterns.

We’re sure Grandpa would have preferred a modern battery lantern to his touchy kerosene railroad lamp but he used what was available at the time.