Once
again I decided to delve into my postcard collection and construct another
historical posting to my blog site.
Since I’m a railroad ‘fan’…especially the old rolling stock…it was a
natural topic for me to explore. This is
especially true when you consider the railroad industry’s impact on the growth
of the United States.
The first
postcard in this grouping shows a steam locomotive pulling a passenger train
and crossing the bridge across the Hudson River near Mechanicsville New
York. This card was sent in 1906 to Miss
Phoebe Millbank in Schenectady NY from someone with the initials H.M.F. in
Mechanicsville.
Actually,
it appears to me that The Hugh C. Leighton Co. Postcard Company got the
spelling wrong. Someone, perhaps their
printer in Hamburg Germany, added an ‘s’ to Mechanicville NY. I couldn’t locate any history regarding the
railroad but Mechanicville was a major railyard and repair center into the
1920s.
Note:
The
commercial development of US railroads began in the mid-1820s. By 1880, the country had 17,800 freight
locomotives and 22,200 passenger locomotives in service. As the nation’s population only numbered
about 50,200,000, that means that there was one locomotive in service for each
1,255 people!
This
postcard, printed in Germany for A.C. Bosselman and Co. in NY City, shows a
‘new’ electric locomotive pulling passenger cars on the New York Central
Railway. It appears to have been mailed in
1909. It was sent “From a friend” to
Master Garrett Dillenback in Albany New York.
Electric
trains were all about the environment…and safety. Several cities passed laws in the early 1900s
forbidding the operation of steam locomotives within city limits. This was primarily because of severe
accidents caused by terrible visibility in tunnels and rock cuts given the
smoke and steam from coal fired locomotives.
New York passed such a law in 1903 and it went into effect in 1908…which
ties into the date on the postcard.
Electric
Locomotive #6000 shown in the postcard was built in 1904 and it was the
prototype for the ALCO-GE S-Motor Class.
Believe it or not, even after being replaced by more powerful
locomotives, old #6000 continued to operate, shuttling deadhead rolling stock
and pulling the occasional shorter commuter train. She actually wasn’t completely retired until
the early 1970s! To see a photo of her
sitting in a field in 1912, waiting for restoration, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Central_S-Motor#/media/File:NYC-100-front-quarter.jpg.
This
postcard showing Omaha’s second Union Station, was sent to Mr. E.G. Anderson in
Chicago by an M. Leonard in 1909. I
suspect that the postcard itself is a bit older as there aren’t any automobiles
shown in the picture despite all the street traffic. By 1909, cars were showing up everywhere…
FYI, the passenger trains came in under the rail shed at the rear of Union
Station.
This
version of Omaha’s Union Station was completed in 1899. It was replaced by the ‘new’ depot, which is
now a museum, in 1939.
Take note
of that packed trolley car in front of the depot. By 1890, the Omaha metropolitan area has more
miles of trolley track than any city in the USA except Boston. By 1910, there were 126.5 miles of track with
600 employees and 445 trolley cars in service.
In 1907, it was estimated that the trolley system carried 51 million
passengers throughout the Omaha NE -Council Bluffs IA metropolitan area.
The next
postcard was sent in 1908 to Mr. E.G. Anderson in Room 7, 209 Adams Street in
Chicago Illinois from HJB in Davenport Iowa.
It was sent in 1909. The card
shows the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Shops that were located in
West Burlington Iowa. Part of these
maintenance and repair shops date back to 1882…and they still stand. With over 570,000 square feet of space, as of
February 2016, the buildings are mostly deserted but they are used and guarded
by the Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe Railroad to store some
locomotives. Otherwise, the last 300
jobs here were transferred to other locations in 2004.
How
pervasive were the railroads at their height?
A good example relates the heavily settled Midwestern Corn Belt. Over 80 of all farms were within 5 miles of a
railway. This proximity facilitated the
shipment of grain, hogs and cattle to national and international markets. Actually, only the agricultural sector of the
economy employed more people than the railroads did…
In our
current environment with instant communications, social media and smart phones,
it’s easy to forget what communications were like in the ‘old days’. In effect, postcards were the e-mails or more
appropriately ‘Twitter’ messages in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This postcard was mailed on July 12, 1909 to
Mr. E. G. Anderson on Park Avenue in Chicago. (Apparently he was no longer
renting a room on Adams Street)
In any
case, was apparently sent by Mr. Anderson’s father as the message begins with
“Dear Children”. It seems like mother
got their letter and was expecting a visit from the children…so much so that
father went down to the Rockford Railway station to meet the “Q” train from
Chicago. Alas, no family disembarked…
The card
itself shows the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway bridge over the Rock
River at Janesville Wisconsin. This
bridge was originally constructed in 1896 and then it was widened in 1908 to
accommodate 2 tracks. It’s apparently
still in use as I found several photos of it on line.
This card
was sent by one humorous fellow in Davenport Iowa to his friend Mr. Eric
Anderson c/o the CB and Q (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad) Tel Offices
at Adams and Franklin Street in Chicago Illinois. I’m guessing that although this postcard was
mailed in 1911, it’s the same ‘Anderson’ as previously noted via the preceding
3 postcards… In any case, his friend
tells him to “Stick to your word and study ‘wire work’. You will never regret it. There is a good future for ‘wire chiefs’
ahead”.
I did
have to determine what a ‘wire chief’ was back in the day. Apparently, they were the ultimate
decision-maker in assigning emergency tasks to linemen, installers, signalmen
and splicers to remedy problems and restore services.
The
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Passenger Station shown on the postcard is
apparently long gone. A parking lot has
replaced it and apparently only one passes this spot today… If you can’t read
our humorous senders notes on the front of the car, he states that the arrow
(below the 2 people) “points to Walter Dan trying to sell a gold brick”.
My
postcard saga with Eric Anderson continues!
At this point, June of 1914, he’s living at 1928 Park Avenue in
Chicago. Eric’s life is apparently
moving forward as the card was sent to him from Harrisburg Pennsylvania, ‘With
Love” by Ruth. Her handwriting isn’t the
best, and she’s had a hard time sleeping on the train. Apparently she was on her way to Philadelphia
and she sent this card at a stop along the way.
The
postcard shows the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Rockville Bridge…the ‘longest stone
bridge in the world’, at Harrisburg.
This bridge, which crosses the Susquehanna River about 5 miles north of
town, was completed in 1902. It still is
the longest stone masonry arch railroad viaduct in the world. Laurie and I have seen this impressive
structure! It has forty-eight 70 foot
long spans and is 3,820 feet long.
When I
purchased these postcards several years ago, I had 2 objectives. They had to be old and they still had to have
stamps on them. I never realized until
now that I was basically tracking Eric Anderson’s life for over 10 years!
This card
was mailed on April 9, 1919. Eric had moved again... This time he was
living at 1930 Washington Boulevard in Chicago. Had he moved up in the world? I’ll never know… In any case, this postcard
was ‘long distance’ compared to the previous cards. It was sent from Long Beach California from
someone (can’t read the writing) who lived in Pasadena. It reads “Greetings from this land of
sunshine, flowers and beauty”.
The
picture on the postcard shows the California
Limited on the Santa Fe Railroad going up the Cajon Pass near Riverside
California. Even though it was a
passenger train, it took 2 locomotives to get the job done. The Cajon pass is a 3,777 foot high mountain
pass between the San Bernardino Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains in
Southern California. The rail line was
built through the pass in the early 1880s.
The California Limited, advertised as the “Finest
Train West of Chicago”, made its first run between Chicago Illinois and Los
Angles California in November of 1892.
This run and its title train were withdrawn from service in June of
1954. The California Limited featured “Fred Harvey Company” meal service and
later trains offered air conditioning, a barber, beautician, clothing press and
even a shower bath.
My last
postcard for this posting 1) isn’t to or from Eric Anderson, and 2) it is
relatively ‘new’, having been mailed to Mrs. Tuple in Reedsburg Wisconsin on Route
1 in September of 1954. Pictured are the
Vista Dome Twin Zephyrs that used to
make the run between St. Paul/Minneapolis Minnesota and Chicago Illinois two
times each day. The Burlington Railroad operated
a large number of distinctive, articulated stainless steel streamlined
passenger trains that were known as the Zephyrs. These trains were the most famous and largest
fleet of streamliners in the USA. The
first of these trains, the Burlington
Zephyr, made a famous ‘dawn to dusk’ run from Denver Colorado to Chicago IL
in May of 1934.
In 1947
the Burlington replaced the old Zephyrs
with these new dome-car trains. Each
train consisted of a baggage-club-lounge car, 4 dome coaches, a diner and a
dome-parlor-observation car. The latter
included a private drawing room with 5 seats.
The dome coaches seated 54 people on the main level and 24 in the dome.
The Burlington
Zephyr Chicago – Minneapolis route was canceled in 1971 with the advent of
Amtrak. Even with 9 stops between
Chicago and Minneapolis, during the 1930 and into the 1950s, these trains made
the trip in about 6 hours and 40 minutes.
Today, using the Interstate highways, the drive will take 6 hours and 10
minutes…without stops. To learn more
about the Zephyr train phenomena and
to learn where you can see one on exhibit, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Zephyr.
The
railroads helped build America, moving untold quantities of freight and
millions of passengers over the years. In
1900, the United States had a population of 76,200,000 and about 225,000 miles
of track in operation. As of 2014, we have
about 332,600,000 million people and about 161,000 miles of track remaining
including sidings, freight yards and other miscellaneous trackage. About 134,000 miles of ‘route’ trackage still
remains in service…but the population has increased by more than 400%.
Just
click on any of the photos to enlarge them…
Thanks
for stopping by for a visit!
Take
Care, Big Daddy Dave
