The Whistling Brakeman

No, not the Singing Brakeman, that's Jimmie Rodgers. This is the lesser known Whistling Brakeman, George E. Nearpass III. Sources alternately give his middle name as Edward or Edwin. His gravestone just uses the initial. Nearpass was born March 5th, 1886 in Hart, MI. He really was a railroad brakeman. reputedly, he began working for the Pennsylvania railroad in 1900 as a newsboy at the age of 12. There's a little family information here. 

Overall, there isn't much information online for Nearpass. The earliest print reference I've found to Nearpass is in a 1925 issue of Traffic World, a railway journal. It reports as follows:

"The entertainment features were provided by an orchestra from Plymouth, Ind., the Broadway Quartet, composed of Pennsylvania employees in the Pittsburgh office, and George E. Nearpass, the “whistling brakeman,’ an employee of the Pennsylvania at Butler, Ind. "

The earliest radio appearance that I found documented was in a 1928 issue of Railway Age. It describes George performing on 720 WCCO-AM in St. Paul, MN on October 31st. The station was only 3 years old at the time, and had only change calls from WLAG a year earlier. Two years later it would join the NBC Red network. 

I found a promotional postcard for "Mr. Geo. E. Nearpass." It's stamped KFNF, and date stamped from April of 1929. The recipient is in Kansas City, MO.  This was the original 920 KFNF-AM in Shenandoah, IA and owned by the Henry Field Seed Co. It signed on in 1924. The stamped call letters suggest they were stamped for the different appearances and the same post cards shipped from each. There are some which are not stamped at all. More here and here. 

In addition to the radio performances they are even more dinner performances, conventions, banquets, and other small venues. One 1930 newspaper article described him as a vaudeville entertainer which is very apt. Some articles describe him as being able to whistle three tones at the same time, impossibly imitating a banjo while playing air banjo. [There's a phrase I never thought I'd write.]

 The Indianapolis Times of April 1929 describes one of these appearances.

"George E. Nearpass, 1429 East Vermont Street, known as “The Whistling Brakeman,” who recently has returned from a twenty-state radio broadcasting tour, will appear at the April dinner of the John H Holliday Jr. post, American Legion, at the First Presbyterian church, Tuesday evening.

Nearpass, who is a Pennsylvania brakeman between Indianapolis and South Bend, when he is not on broadcasting trips, has been heard over WLW, WLS, KDKA and other big stations, in his original monologue, “A Trip on the Punkin Vine Limited." 

In 1930 The Railroad Brakemans' Journal published a short bio which confirmed that Nearpass was employed as a regular brakeman on a daily passenger run between Indianapolis and South Bend. It further explains that he has broadcast from nearly fifty radio stations, listing off KDKA, WLW, WCCO, WSB and WLS. But it also notes that he gained the most attention through a monologue "A Trip on the Punkin' Vine Limited." It's exact contents may be lost to time but we know from news articles that the monologue describes a real train line in Indiana which operated until 1980. [SOURCE] 

Another promo postcard from 1924 puts Nearpass on KDKA at 8:30 PM doing barnyard imitations. This may be the Punkin' Vine Ltd. There are more sources that corroborate this. A 1930 issue of the Rushville Republican does explain it's contents:

"In taking his listeners on a "Trip on the Punkin Vine Limited" George describes his daily work on this train loading and unloading pigs, chickens, cows, caves, and what-not in and out of the express car. Nearpass makes with his mouth all the various noises in the car as he hustles the express."

By all appearances his radio career was short, perhaps just 6 years.  But his railroad career continued for decades more. A 1947 issue of the Railroad Trainman reported that George had retired from his work on the railroad. He would have been about 61 at the time. He died September 10th, 1963. His son, George Nearpass IV, also went to work for the railroad.

It's worth noting there were more Whistling Brakemen over the years. The most well known was a Canadian man in named Roy Thoreson. [SOURCE] According to one talent guide he performed on the Tonight Show. He seems to have been active from about 1980 to 1995.He was a regular on the Calgary Stampede, a rodeo. In 1993 he even met with then president of the soviet union, Mikail Gorbechev. He died in 2015.

Kresge 1931 Catalog

 

The rabbit hole goes deep indeed. In my personal archive I have only one of the S.S. Kresge Radio catalogs and this one is from 1931-1932. It runs 32 pages deep, chock full of resistors, batteries and tubes. You won't find the word capacitor in here. It's too early. They're still generally called condensers, mostly Mershon and Aerovox, a few from Potter and Muter. There are just two models made by Eureka I'm unfamiliar with.  I do appreciate that there is no safety warning whatsoever. Anything over about 100v can do you harm and these go up to 2,000 v. 

By 1931 we were growing out of the hobbyist era. Instead of lists and crude components there are now full branded kits for sale by Pilot and Philmore. Some of these kits have just 2 tubes which puts things in perspective. There is still some assembly required but the most expensive is $34.50. In 2026 dollars that's $738.24. But inflation in 2026 was so bad that numbers don't mean anything anymore.

You can download the whole catalog 
HERE

Kmart Radios

1924 catalog

Kmart was originally founded in 1899 as the S. S. Kresge Corporation. (Sebastian Spering Kresge) The use of the brand name "Kmart" only began in 1962, but they kept using the Kresge name on retail stores until 1987. At it's peak in 1994 Kmart had 2,486 stores globally, making it the largest retailers in the world at that time. But 1994 was already 4 years into it's first major bankruptcy. Their decline continued for decades and as of 2026, there are only three remaining Kmart locations in the world. You can imagine that with a 125 year long history, Kmart sold a lot of radios. But most antique radio journals steer clear. The only entry I found was a someone selling reprints of the 1929 Kresge radio catalog, and of course the many works of Don Kresge at the Alabama Historical Radio Society. [LINK]

The earliest radio the Radio Museum lists with a Kmart-related brand is the Kres-Tone Six Transistor radio [SOURCE]. (Kres is short for Kresge). It's a nice 1950s-style plastic chassis table radio. The earliest Kres-tone branded radio I am aware of is the 75-1 from 1948 which is a wooden table radio.  Unhelpfully, the US patent office lists the first use of the Kres-tone trademark to be in 1957. So that was either filed very late, or the one below is a fraud. (I am assuming the former.)

radioatticarchives.com

The chassis is in a somewhat less ornate, art deco style similar to the RCA sets of the era. For those big wooden radios, some of which were basically furniture, Kresge even sold their own Kresge Household Polish. It specifically said on the label "Cleans and polishes all radios, furniture & autos."  But in the 1920s and 1930s their advertising outside of the catalog was scant. Except for those catalogs, Kresge  appears in no publications I can find; except for their daily stock price in the New York Times, and that only prior to Black Thursday. 

From surviving paper catalogs we know that Kresge was selling radios as early as 1924. But that 1924 catalog was mostly kits. These were parts and parts lists with instructions for hobbyists to assemble a Reinartz detector receiving set. That receiver design is named for John L. Reinartz. He started his own eponymous company and began making and selling 1-tube regenerative receivers. The name Reinartz remained attached to CW receivers through the 1920s even as the designs grew more complex and added more tubes. But early experimental stations like 5EK did use those early Reinartz receivers. 

That 1924 Kresge's Radio Catalogue and Buyers Guide is definitely early. It's 31 pages long and doesn't even includes the tubes... though it did have tube sockets. I guess you were on your own to source the vacuum tubes. It's also notable that the radios are not branded and the questions arise: When did Kresge start selling branded radios and when did they start selling Kmart branded Radios? Do those dates overlap? When did it end? I can confirm that hobbyist mindset continues at Kresge through the 1929 catalog. We also know that no Kmart branded radio can exist before about 1962. So that's our time brackets. 

Kmart sold many different branded transistor radios over the years, mostly portables. The site plasticradio.com has a few images. [SOURCE]  I think we're all very familiar with the vintage Sears and Radioshack radios. There are legions of them. But I think Kmart is under appreciated. Take for example this little AM transistor radio. It's nice and compact, about 3" x 2.5" and less than an inch thick. That's less than half the size of my 1950s Candle 6 transistor. There is even a 1/8th headphone jack in the back. It's adorable.

This one [above] has a clear number in the middle of the CPB. It looks like 6OIA, or maybe 601A... unless that's a G and not a 6. Maybe it's not so clear. The Tuning capacitor is stamped 2A-20H1 and below that 5213. I tried to parse it but none of these seem to be date codes. This particular 1960s Kmart Radio also came in green and yellow. It's more sleek than the boxy leatherette portables carry that brand name. I've also seen that pocket model with the Emperor logo on them. The Hong Kong manufacturer clearly found another buyer. All of these models proudly bear a "Made in Hong Kong" origin imprint.  

But that's not the end of the Kmart radios. In the 1960s there dual-branded portable AM/FM radios appeared. The best example I found was a series with the model numbers: 30-01, 31-60, 31-42, 30-30, 31-88, 30-62, 31-64 and 30-50. The front has a Kmart logo embossed on the surface, usually painted silver. and on the back is a paper label "S.S. Kresge Company." They all have similar materials, finishes color schemes and vary only in size and features. The 31-88 for example is a multi-band, AM/FM/AIR/Police/Weather radio. From that set the 30-02 and the 30-50 are beige instead of brown. I think it's the earlier model line. 

I also found models of walkie-talkies with the dual brand, models 32-61 and 32-65 clearly from the same 1960s series. It is tempting to think that the last two digits are the year, but that does not line up chronologically. But they provide a clue as to the end of the dual brand because the next set of walkie-talkies from the 1970s is model 06-32-67 and instead of S.S. Kresge on the paper label it reads "Kmart Corporation."  Luckily those have the manufacturers date stamped on the back March 1978. Also from this clearly transitional era I found a portable AM/FM Cassette recorder, model 6-33-56. Despite the numbering is is still labeled S.S. Kresge Co. So it appears that the Kresge brand was retired from radios about 10 years before the end of the retail signage.

1979 Kmart circular

By 1980, table radios were basically extinct at retail. So what we have left are car radios and different sizes of portables. How much longer did Kmart "make" radios? Those Kmart Corporation radios like the 06-31-51 and the 6-33-56 have a continuity of design which put them all in the late 70s. But there was at least one more model line. In the 80s I found the 06-44-10 which looks distinctly like a new line and new design. It's minimalist silver chassis looks vaguely 90s and eschews the ornate designs of the prior lines. This was probably their final line as the bankruptcies quickly followed.

Find That Zenith

 

I do like it when I find a radio with identifiable presets. It means we get to play a game I call Find That Radio. It also helps that this Zenith is gorgeous, though I think it's been refinished. This looks like someone stripped it and put on a thick coat of modern polyurethane. Looks good though, nice job.  It's a model 5S319 made in 1939. [SOURCE] Zenith made a few Art Deco models mostly in the late 1930s and early 1940s: 5S126, 5S218, 7S323, 7SC33R, 6R631, 6S632 and the 5F233 which this one also resembles. 

The call signs on the 5 preset buttons are WJZ, WORK, WLW, WCAU and WGR.  The WJZ-AM of today is on 1300 in Baltimore as it has been since 2008. But this is definitely the earlier WJZ. The original WJZ was out of Newark from 1921 - 1923 on 833 kHz. Based on the age of the radio, 1940s this is the WJZ in New York City that operated from 1923 - 1953 on 660 kHz. It's a 30-year window of time, but we can narrow that down I think.

1000 WORK-AM was a station in York, PA. They signed on March 17, 1932. After NARBA in 1941 they moved to 1350. They kept the calls until 1973 which narrows our time frame significantly on the bottom end. Despite using the call letters for over 40 years there is very little written about WORK. Most of what you will find focuses on Shorty Fincher and his Prairie Pals. This 1,000 watt station would have been mostly a local or regional station even in 1940. 

Station WLW began as experimental station 8XAA around 1921. That start date is somewhat debated.  More here. Putting that aside, WLW became WLW in March,1922 and operated on 833 kHz. It moved to 970 in 1923, then 710 where it stayed until 1927 when it made the move to 700 kHz where it remains today. This completely envelops the time frame and adds little to the story. Except for adding a pin to the map in Cincinnati, OH. 

This WCAU is not the 98.1 WCAU-FM but the AM station which began broadcasting in 1922. It operated as WCAU from 1922–1990, almost 70 years. The frequency would have been 1170 when this radio was first plugged in. It was probably listened to before and after WCAU both the AM and FM sides were sold to The Philadelphia Record in 1946.  After 1990 it became WOGL, then WGMP and is today WPTS, a news-talker on 1210. 

The last station on the list is 550 WGR-AM in Buffalo, NY today.  There is no debate on the frequency, they have been on 550 since 1928. It's interesting that the frequencies hop back and forth and aren't in any particular order on the presets. This 5,000 watt station would have been audible for hundreds of miles back in 1940, whereas WLW at 50,000 watts would have had it's frequency to itself across the whole east coast and been heard clear across the Mississippi river. 

 

Looking at the pins on a map I think the radio was East of Pittsburgh, PA but north of Baltimore, MD. There are just no local station in these presets except for WORK. If it was in a major city we might see local calls from those cities like WBAL or even WKBO if it was in Harrisburg. This really has to be in some reasonable distance from York, PA probably in a square between York, Hagerstown, Lancaster and Reading. Strangely I found this radio in Georgia. 

Koala vs. KSDT

KSDT is still on air today. But the about section of their website lists only current staff names, no history whatsoever. The 2008 website was the same way. But the station does have history. It goes back decades. The best secondary source on those early years is the UC Guardian. [SOURCE] It describes the earliest set up in 1968, an old military building made out of corrugated steel. They ran carrier current over the university’s electrical system on 540 AM. The Guardian cites the true start in 1967

"According to these accounts, KSDT originated in 1967 in a Pacific Beach garage, from where a group of students broadcasted tunes using a low power signal. With the help of then Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Robert Topolovac, KSDT founders Don Bright and Jon Collins were awarded funding to establish a college radio station on UCSD. "

I am pleased to report we have a print reference at least as early as 1971. The Underground Guide to the College of Your Choice describes KSDT as "dynamite like an FM rock station". 

KSDT is unusual in that there is a decent print record of their activity from at least the mid 1980s through today. Typically there are obvious gaps, or newspaper stories about re-starting the station. This one just has a short gap in the early 80s. It's also notable that the call letters never changed. 

In February of 1974, KSDT appears in the "What's Happening" section of Billboard as a College chart reporter. It reads "KSDT-CAFM U. of California, San Diego at La Jolla, Linda Clark."   No frequency is given.  The most evidence we have for continuous operation is in CMJ from the mid 1980s  through the 1990s. There are too many phone numbers. 

In a CMJ chart from April 1984 a very fake sounding MD name Taarson Homard accompanies a top 30 which lists it as CAFM but at 95.7 so they may have moved to a leaky PM operation in that era. 619-452-3673. 

In 1989 A top 30 submitted by Kicky Kia. The book Gigging also includes the station that year, but only with generic contact info still using the 3673 phone number.  

1994 a metal chart issue, Jerry Radcocg phone number is (619) 534-4225. 

1995 a Top 30 with two MDs: Michael Hu/Brent Turne, still 4225

In 1996 the MD is Brent Turner, solo this time, and he cranked out a few Top 30 charts.  

In 1997 KSDT appears again in reporting Loud rock chart and Beatbox but not Top 30. (Beatbox was a predecessor to the RPM chart) The metal director is still Jerry Radcocg. 

In 2002 MD Bryan Brick started reporting a top 30, and a new phone number shows up: 619-534-0479. 

In 2011 KSDT is listed in the CMJ directory

 

The late 1980s look very active. They even appear in Maximum Rock N Roll in 1989. Apparently they were selling a compilation cassette: "I hear College Puke."  It's very rare. [SOURCE] I want this tape so bad. It's actually one of 6 releases recorded at the station, the first and last of which both feature the punk band Sub Society. More here. 

 

In 1990 and 1992 they again in MRNR, plugs for the shows "Hardcore Punk Etc.," "Kids on Coffee" and "Energy Control" in scene reports. It makes the connection that Chris Valle in Sub Society hosted that program.  Also in 1992 they are references in Flipside magazine which is notable because it describes the broadcast situation for them and KSD. It's highly unusual but they may have been available on local CATV off campus. 

"...there [are]  two 24 hour alternative radio stations. KSDT on the campus of UCSD (95.7) and KCR onthe campus of SDSU (sorry, don't know the dial #). Unfortunately, both are on cable radio, so you must have a cable hookup on your stereo to receive these. Cox and Southwestern have recently changed their policy and do not charge any monthly fee to get your cable radio"

The 2000 version of the KSDT website confirms the usual local CATV arrangement. But it also lists both the AM and FM channels. It does appear all four were active at the same time.

• SRTV Triton Channel 18 - SAP channel 
• Cox Southwestern Cable Music Choice Channel 41

Another 1992 highlight for KSDT is their inclusion in the Book Your Own Fucking Life which every band should own. It instructs the band to call Adam Eisemberg. The 2000 edition names Daniel Najera. In 1999 the KSTD call letters appear in an issue of the USCD underground newspaper named Koala and I don't even know what to say about this. It is one of the stranger things I've ever found googling call letters. In 2001 Koala thanks Pete from KSDT. They also appear in the CMJ directory that year. It appears again in 2002 minus the Koala dildo thing. It is not the only time Koala deliberately misspelled the call sign. 

That is not a typo, that's personal - Koala March 2008

Around 2017 They are referred to in a poetry book Voices Bright Flags with the mention of a poetry podcast on KSDT radio. This is a frequent trajectory for carrier current stations. If they last into the 80s they usually attempt an FM conversion. If they survive that we usually see podcasts after 2010.  Jen at Radio Survivor visited the station in 2019. [SOURCE] That article mentions the stations 50+ year history, by my math their 60th anniversary is next year! 

Disambiguation: 

• From 1999 to 2006 there was a 1320 KSDT-AM in Hemet, California. It was owned by Lazer Broadcasting, and the format was "Pure Gold, rock and roll", which seemed tired at the time but I'd take it back today.  
• The call sign KSDT also appears in reports about the Ryukyu Islands. This is always 780 KSDT-AM in Okinawa. This is an interesting station, just not one in La Jolla.