Telling the difference between a nickel finish and a chrome finish

A. Hi Gary.

Parts can be either nickel plated or nickel-chrome plated (nickel plating followed by chrome plating). If parts are used indoors, nickel plating is still quite common; but for exterior use, most everything today is chrome plated.

If they're from the 30s they are not chromed, because chrome wasn't done in production then. I'd bet on nickel on toy train parts anyway though. Nickel has a faintly yellow cast and chrome has a faintly blue cast, but it's hard to tell except by comparing them to known samples or to each other.

Regards,

A. Sorry to say, Ted, but nickel-chrome was almost universal on automobile trim by the mid 1930s. Although used previously on smaller parts, Ford switched the Model A radiator shell and bumpers from Nickel to Ni-Cr for the 1930 model year, and all car makers followed soon after. So by the early 1930s, chrome plating was widespread. By 1940 the only nickel still bring done was some small barrel plated parts.

Train parts, however, are small and therefore many were nickel barrel plated and likely continue to be so even today.

You're right of course Jeffrey. I relied on my memory rather than double-checking, which was a mistake! Colin Fink made chrome plating practical with his 1926 patent, which I falsely recollected as being 1936. Sorry.

Regards,

Thanks for the replies;, this should answer my question.
Gary

A. On Automobile chrome, Henry Ford never made chrome plated radiator shells in 1930. In fact, Ford only chrome plated them for less that two months in late 1929. In 1930 and '31 he switched all bright work, including radiator shells, to stainless steel. Prior to November 1929 all bright work was Nickel, except the bumpers, which were actually chrome since the Model A was introduced in December 1927.

A. Hi Serge. We appended your inquiry to a thread where the question was already answered. In the 1920's it would have been nickel only because chrome wasn't yet commercialized.

Regards,