The "T" is a topic of conversation as of lately. I have asked around to several very knowledgeable collectors this very question. The verdict is somewhat mixed though. There is one school of thought that say the "T" stands for Double barrel trap gun, and the other school of through says its just a carry over for the "O" which means selective one trigger...the thinking is the "T" stands for trigger.I have researched this in great detail... My observations are that there must be something special with the "T" in that it is not used very much in any of the ledger copies I have or that I have seen. In the copies I have researched it is very common to see for example REO and then another symbol for the various other options...then every once in a while you will see REOTxx.
To me anyway...if the T was just a carry over for the word trigger why was is used so infrequently? After speaking with several about this...I am in the school of thought that the T indeed means double barrel trap package.
In the case of my Eagle...it has the special long beavertail forend...straight stock with nearly square dimensions...etc... There is no mention of B for beavertail in my ledger copy...which is not uncommon even if the gun was original with a Beavertail...however...if one ordered the Double barrel trap package this package included a "special beavertail forend" nicer wood, more attention was paid to boring, etc...
All of this fits my gun to a "T" sorry for the play on letters LOL... At any rate...who can say for sure? I wish I could, but all I can say is my theory and others theories...
In the John Houchins book if you look at the ledgers of Deluxe/Premier/Monograms...look in the type column...this anomaly occurs now and again. You can clearly see several that have just the letter O, then occasionally, you see the letters OT. I can't bring myself to think it's just someone putting the T for trigger sometimes, and other times leaving it out...with the amount of times it occurs, there must be a special meaning to it...and thus far, the most probable theory I have found/read/heard is that it indeed means Double barrel trap package.
Lastly...there was someone who posted they had an Eagle Grade that Cody lettered AS A TRAP PACKAGE gun...this was posted here on March 19th, and was posted by JIM...I would sure like to hear more about this letter to see what the ledger type was and what the letter stated! So please Jim, please respond to this and help us out!
So with all that said, does anyone care to offer any further ideas on this subject...sorry to beat this to death, but at least more people have asked the same question, thus making me feel a little bit better about the repetition.