The Brass Rail Bar is a tony kind of joint. You can almost visualize Diamond Jim Brady strolling in with a blond on his arm, probably pausing at the infinity of mirrors at each end of the bar to straighten the stickpin in his cravat.

This would be Brady`s kind of place, with the high-class oak paneling on the walls, the brass rails and trim polished to a golden gleam, the plush dark red carpeting and the opulent stained glass inserts around the swinging doors. Step through those swinging doors and you`re in the 'back room.' Here you can play the slot machines lining the walls and listen to nickelodeons banging out their tinny tunes. Take a seat in chairs with 'Seipp Brewing' or 'Schlitz' carved on the back and placed around tables with little claw feet. Relax in the glow of stained glass lamps.

The Brass Rail is not a real turn-of-the-century Chicago saloon. It`s in Pete Hansen`s basement in Des Plaines. It is Hansen`s creativity and craftsmanship that awaken nostalgic fantasies of what such a saloon might have been like.

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'I sort of had a picture in mind,' Hansen says when asked if the Brass Rail is based on a model. 'It came out of my imagination. I tried to keep it all authentic from around the turn of the century.

'Everything is old, including the oak paneling and stained glass, which came out of Hyde Park mansions about to meet the wrecker`s ball. Most everything came out of the Chicago area,' though the 1895 bar came out of a Joliet saloon.

'Everything is antique except the wallpaper, the carpeting and the tin ceiling.'

The ceiling is a reproduction of the real thing. 'The same company is making the same ceiling they made 80 years ago,' Hansen says. 'It took three weeks and 20,000 nails to put up the ceiling. I put nails in every couple of inches so it doesn`t rattle, which is quite unusual. If you don`t do that, everytime you walked up the stairs you`d hear the ceiling.'

When asked what inspired him to build what visitors, especially men, seem to think is the ultimate basement, he replies laconically, 'I like brass.'

One male visitor called it 'the most unique basement I`ve ever seen.'

It is certainly one of the most perfect settings to display a man`s varied collecting manias, including coin-operated slot machines and nickelodeons, brass, barroom memorabilia and architectural artifacts.

The bar is a showplace for antique liquor bottles, old advertisements, two National cash registers from 1902 and 1908, plus several large antique American brass containers 'for making anything hot,' from Liquid Carbonic Co.

'Those I can still run across,' says Hansen, who finds the rest of the stuff not as easy to find. 'They look like garbage until they`re polished.' The amazing part about it is that Hansen designed and built the whole thing himself with no experience in carpentry.

It took him about four months, working full time eacy day from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. to do it, he says.

One of the problems he faced was that 'the original back of the bar, as with most of them, was was 14 feet tall.' Hansen had to cut it down and match the top to the size of the room, only 7 1/2 feet high.

'I ended up making the top,' he says, then trimming it with bits of brass he found in Milwaukee.

Before he launched the project, the basement had the hideousness common to basements everywhere. Behind a bead-curtained doorway Hansen stores tools in a corner that`s still unfinished: gray concrete walls overrun with pipes and gray concrete floor.

Last year Hansen also designed and built an unusually handsome, multileveled outdoor deck with a Victorian-theme gazebo, complete with old street lamps, overlooking the small lake at the back of his house.

'The ornateness and the craftsmanship is why I like the Victorian period,' he says. (He has a variety of collectibles from furniture to dolls and china from that era in the upstairs part of the house.)

Asked about the intricacies of piecing together a variety of spoils from Chicago mansions to create his basement hideaway, Hansen replies, 'It`s like a jigsaw puzzle. If you don`t have enough, you can`t go out and replace it.

'I put things together. Actually, I made some of them up. The heads of the lions (above the entrance to the saloon), for example, originally were door knockers. I just cut them up.'

He even did a superb job piecing things to make doors. The seams are undetectable.

'The refinishing was the biggest job; I sanded and sanded,' he says.

And he keeps the antique wood gleaming with ordinary furniture polish.

It was about 15 years ago that he got the collector`s bug, Hansen says,

'and once you get it, you never get rid of it.' He became especially interested in slot machines and nickelodeons.

He also has an extensive collection of old phonograph players and gramophones. 'I just bought `em and never sold them,' he says. He displays them in the back room, behind what was once a teller`s cage.

His wooden chairs bearing the names of Seipp and Schlitz, he explains, were premiums to the saloons from the breweries. 'Today they give them a neon sign. Years ago they gave them tables and chairs,' he says.

Another rare item is the 'saloon`s' Big Six Wheel, which he found in Las Vegas. He says it`s 'more of a speakeasy or casino item from the `20s, made by the Evans Co. of Chicago in 1915.'

Also in a corner of the back room are a row of Quarter Scopes, which offer X-rated movies, tame by today`s standards.

'These were out at Riverview originally,' Hansen says. 'The dirtiest thing you might see would be a toe. I just call them picture machines. They came out about 1895 and were popular through the `20s in saloons and hotels.' Explaining the eclectic nature of his collection, Hansen says, 'I bought what I liked. Most of it was picked up years ago.'

But he has more slot machines than anything else.

'Everybody sort of has some kind of fascination for slot machines, whether they`re a gambler or not,' he says. 'If they could only talk, they could tell you some wild stories. Your typewriter would be going forever.'

Hansen owns some of the first slot machines ever made, dating from 1898. In his collection is a 1932 Mills War Eagle, 'a very popular machine . . . probably the prettiest machine Mills ever made,' he says.

He also owns 'a Deweyette, the only Deweyette known to exist, made in 1898, found in Antioch, Ill.'

What makes the Deweyette slot machine rare is that it plays music, too.

'I got it from the original owner, who was 87 years old. He operated the stuff. He had all the saloons in southern Wisconsin. In his period most of the stuff was illegal. Years ago Antioch--all those small northwest towns--were wide open,' Hansen says.

(A barber pole in a corner of the living room exemplifies Hansen`s collecting philosophy. It came out of New York, he says, and 'that`s another one and only. There`s a lot of stained glass barber poles, but that`s the only one in that design. Many people around the country collect `barber shop.` I paid a left lung for that barber pole. I paid twice as much as what it is worth, but I wouldn`t have any trouble getting rid of it. It is the `bargains` that have gotten me. If something is unusual, it is easy to sell.')

'I like anything that`s coin-operated,' Hansen says. 'Actually, what I like about this stuff is the precision with which it was made, the quality and the beauty. The stuff was made to last forever.

'Slot machines used to stand in hotel lobbies, saloons. All the major manufacturers of slot machines were in Chicago. Mills, Jennings and Watley were the three big manufacturers.'

The nickelodeons he has collected also are rare because they were made only during a 10-year period, 1915 to 1925, in Chicago by companies such as Mills, Seeburg and Wurlitzer. They used to stand in restaurants, ice cream parlors, tobacco stores, old theaters and hotel lobbies, he says.

In his basement is a 1915 Seeburg Nickelodeon, one of only about 20 in existence. 'It`s got about 12 instruments, like a full band, in a small compact case. Most had two instruments, the piano and the mandolin,' Hansen explains.

'It is a shame you can`t put sound in the article,' he says, and he`s right.

The nickelodeons, Hansen says, were rendered passe by jukeboxes, which could reproduce the human voice, while nickelodeons were limited to instrumentals. 'It`s just like everything you get today,' Hansen says,

Vintage Slot Machine Glass Panels

'it`s obsolete almost as soon as you get it.'

Hansen had to learn how to repair his collectibles himself. 'Most everything I found I had to restore. I`m just mechanically minded. I collected old manuals on the stuff,' he says.

(There are rows of machines in a spare bedroom upstairs; and those which still need to be put in working order are stacked in the garage.)

Hansen`s interest in slot machines and nickelodeons turned into a business. Formerly a body shop owner, today he sells mainly to other collectors, dealers and architects. 'They go crazy over this stuff in Texas, New York, California,' he says. 'Chicago is more conservative, but everybody likes a slot machine for their rec room.'

The rec room slot machine craze has been going on since the `50s, but they have been legal in Illinois for only five years.

'Until January, 1979, it was illegal to have slot machines. (Gov. James) Thompson passed a law that says you could own one, providing the slot machine is 25 years old or older. Anything over 25 years old is considered an antique item,' Hansen says.

'California was the first state to legalize them; the 7th or 8th state was Illinois.'

The legalization has made items scarce. 'Ten years ago slot machines still were plentiful. Now you can`t find them any more,' he says.

Stained Glass Slot Machine Machines

Prices have soared, too. He bought a Dewey slot machine 10 or 12 years ago for $175; it`s now worth $12,000, he says.

Slot Machine Glass Art

Apparently Hansen is not alone in his love for the old machines. The Chicagoland Slot Machine Show, held every spring and fall at the O`Hare Expo Center, usually draws 2,000 collectors each time, he says.