An Anniversary to Celebrate, Soon!!!

There is no train on this post card; at least, I can’t see one. But it is a picture of a gigantic celebration of an event involving a train. This is the inauguration of the first train coming into Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This was an event worthy of celebrating. Since 1891, Edmonton’s neighbouring city to the south, Strathcona, had had its own train station and the end of the train line. The Calgary & Edmonton Railway had been stopping in Strathcona, on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River for over 10 years.

It wasn’t until 1902 that a train actually entered into Edmonton. This train was owned by the Edmonton, Yukon & Pacific. It was simply a connecting railway between the C & E Railway and the city of Edmonton. The route went down what is now the Mill Creek Ravine's walking and bicycling path and went across the Low Level Bridge into Edmonton. My last blog had some information about the train and the Low Level Bridge.

Three years later, on November 24, 1905 the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) entered Edmonton from the east. That is what they are celebrating on the front of this post card. The entrance of the CNoR into Edmonton.

This post card is foreshadowing the future because the call letters they are using for the Canadian Northern Railway are CNR, of which the CNoR will eventually become a part.

The CNoR eventually owned a transcontinental line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Edmonton. It began as a consolidation of several branch lines around the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) in Manitoba. Two men purchased the shares of all of these lines and established the CNoR in 1899. CNoR's first step toward competing directly with CPR came at the start of the 20th century with the decision to build a line linking the Prairie Provinces with Lake Superior at the harbour in Port Arthur-Fort William (what we know today as Thunder Bay, Ontario) which would permit the shipping of western grain to European markets as well as the transport of eastern Canadian goods to the West. The last spike of the CNoR transcontinental railway was driven January 23, 1915, at Basque, British Columbia.

Unfortunately, along with several other railway lines, the CNoR came upon hard financial times. At first it was absorbed into the Canadian Government Railways (1918) and then into the railway, which is today called the Canadian National Railway in 1923.

This post card was mailed on May 22, 1907 – that makes the card over 106 years old - about a year and half after the celebration depicted on the front of the post card. It was published by the Edmonton Music Company and, like many cards of this time, it was printed in Germany. The message on the back is from a brother to his sister:
“Dear Sister, I guess you will be surprised to hear of me being up here. Will write in a day or so and give you all the news. As ever, your Loving Bro.”

Boy Away from Home

"Trains entering California and Florida through Orange Groves" is a theme that repeats again and again in my post card collection. I posted earlier this year about two post cards with the same scene, one claiming it was in California and the other Florida. This post card is sticking with the California concept. It is certainly a real possibility. When I lived in California there were train tracks that passed next to and through orange groves. I remember one that went through an avocado grove! In the bottom left of the post card, starting the title, is the combination: H-2290. This immediately tells me that this post card was printed so the the Fred Harvey Company could sell it.

In 1878 Fred Harvey was the first to established a chain of restaurants then hotels across the Southwest that provided quality service. Much was done to market the region including publishing large series of postcards depicting Native Americans and local scenery. In 1897 Harvey took over the news stands for the A.T.&S.F. Railroad and began distributing postcards. The Santa Fe Railroad also did a great deal to publicize its Route to the Grand Canyon. A large amount of postcards were produced depicting the canyon and the Railroad’s hotel interests within the National Park.

Fred Harvey himself provided some of the images for these cards until his death in 1901. Between 1901 and 1932 the Company contracted all their cards with the Detroit Publishing Company (that is who printed this post card). These cards have an H prefix before their identification number, but in addition Detroit published many of Harvey’s images on their own. After Detroit closed, many of Harvey’s cards were contracted out to Curt Teich among others.

The message on the back is a son telling his mother that he is okay and in North Bend, Oregon. She lives in Hilltop, Kansas. My short research indicates to me that Hilltop's post office was discontinued in August of 1951. I am not sure if it disappeared altogether, or if it was absorbed into Wichita. There is an area in Kansas that is remembered in Wikipedia as Hilltop, but there is also a district in Wichita named Hilltop.

This is "Hammerhead", but not like in the shark.

The locomotive on the front of this post card, Lehigh Valley No. 211, was originally built by Alco for the Pennsylvania Railroad in December 1953 and was delivered as PRR 8445. It is unique in that it has a raised short hood used to house the dynamic brakes and a steam generator for heating passenger cars. For obvious reasons it soon got the nickname

“Hammerhead.” It is the only survivor of a group of five RS-3s built with a high short hood for PRR and Western Maryland Railway, and one of only a handful of surviving Conrail rebuilds where the Alco prime mover was replaced with an EMD. The information above was taken from this website: https://rgvrrm.org/about/railroad/lv211/#:~:text=Originally%20built%20for%20Pennsylvania%20Railroad%20in%201953%2C%20the,hood%20gave%20Lehigh%20Valley%20211%20its%20%22Hammerhead%22%20nickname. This website, one of my favourite websites about railroads and railroad related information is the source of the details that follow below: https://www.american-rails.com/lv.html The Lehigh Valley Railroad was another of the many Northeastern carriers built to move anthracite coal from eastern Pennsylvania. The direct predecessor of the Lehigh Valley was the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad (DLS&S) incorporated on September 20, 1847. Unfortunately, the DLS&S was having difficulty raising capital. Its fortunes finally turned when Asa Packer breathed new life into the operation. Using his financial success, and with the help of investors, he acquired the DLS&S charter and renamed it as the Lehigh Valley Railroad (LV) in 1853. It is unlikely the Lehigh Valley could have survived into the modern era. The LV competed against several carriers in its territory, notably the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and Erie, both of whom also reached Buffalo, while the latter continued on to Chicago. One can reasonably argue that its long decline began with the stock market's collapse in October of 1929. The Lehigh Valley Railroad posted its last profits during the 1950s. The LV would, sadly, show a profit for the last time in 1956 and paid its final dividend in 1957, The depression not only weakened the railroad financially but decreasing anthracite demand further hurt its bottom line. In 1928 the PRR began acquiring LV stock and continued to do so throughout the years in an increasingly futile attempt to maintain its investment within the declining company. By April of 1962 it, incredibly, controlled 90% of the road. As much as the railroad tried it was unable to reverse its declining fortunes. Its last hope for survival occurred when the PRR and New York Central created the ill-fated Penn Central Transportation Company in 1968. As Penn Central literally fell apart from its first day of service it came as no surprise that just two years later, in 1970, it declared bankruptcy. It was one of the numerous bankrupts rolled into Conrail whereupon its routes were considered superfluous.

Short-lived but Important!

Wikipedia tells us that in 1975, the Boston & Maine Railroad Corporation filed to abandon its 73-mile (117 km) "White Mountain Branch" stretching between Concord and Lincoln, New Hampshire. Recognizing the need of the on-line customers and the potential of the line for a sewer right-of-way, the State of New Hampshire purchased the branch and sought a shortline railroad to carry out operations. The first to assume this responsibility was the Wolfeboro Railroad, which operated the line as their "Central Division" in 1976, but soon thereafter ended operations.

The Goodwin Railroad, an extension of Weaver Bros. Construction, was created in 1977 to operate the trackage, and did so until it too ended operations in 1980. The picture on the front of this post card is of one of the locomotives that were used by the Weaver Bros. Construction Company while it operated on the right of way. It is seen here at Lakeport, New Hampshire on February 10, 1978. Following the demise of the Goodwin contract, the North Stratford Railroad stepped in as an interim operator until the state could find a dependable and permanent long-term operator. This website (of the Weaver Bros. Construction Company today) gives us a great big hint about why the railroad would have been named the “Goodwin Railroad”. https://wbcc.biz/about-us/our-story/ Weaver Brothers was Incorporated in 1946 by Carlton and Halsey Weaver. The Weaver Brothers were extremely important in the construction of the highways system in the State of New Hampshire. With their John Deere bulldozer, their 1.5-yard P&H shovel, and rented equipment, they built two pieces of I-89 in Warner, parts of I-93 in Campton and Franconia, stretches of the Kancamangus Highway, and portions of Route 106 in Belmont. In 1951, Herb Goodwin joined Weaver Brothers and eventually took ownership control of the company in 1973 along with partners Richard Smith and Roger Bates. Weaver Brothers Construction was very involved in construction and reconstruction of railroads under Herb’s leadership. In 1994, the Bates brothers, Mark, Peter and Jeff, completed the buyout of the company, Mark acting as President until his passing in 2011. Jeff and Peter Bates are the current owners of the firm and have guided the work required by the State of New Hampshire for the very ambitious I-93 widening project which has represented a large part of the company's efforts in the last decade.

The photo on the post card is courtesy of Ronald N. Johnson. It was published by Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialities, Inc. December 15, 1985 Mrs. Mary Jayne Rowe, age 82, of Covington, died Thursday, October 8, 2015, at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Roanoke after a long illness. She is survived by her husband of 59 years, John Zern Rowe. Mrs. Rowe was born July 15, 1933 in Ackermanville, PA, the daughter of the late Stanley and Helen S. Wasser. A member of this community since 1979, Mary Jayne was a homemaker and assisted with office work for the land surveying company she and her husband owned. She taught Sunday school and was church treasurer at Trinity Lutheran Church in Hollywood, FL.

Delaware & Hudson on the Ulster and Delaware or on the Delaware and Ulster!??? I am confused.

The locomotive shown on the front of this post card is an Alco RS-36 that was owned by the Delaware & Hudson Railway. In this picture, it has been restored to run on the Delaware and Ulster Railroad in Arkville, New York.

The motto of the Delaware and Ulster is “Catskill Scenic Trail”. You can see it on the back of the post card that I have scanned below. Wikipedia tells us that by the end of the Civil War, railroads were pre-empting waterways as the preferred method of transportation. Thomas Cornell, founder of the Cornell Steamboat Company and a resident of Rondout, New York, was among those who noticed. Although Cornell made plenty of money from shipping, he planned a railroad that would bring supplies from towns in central or western New York to his port in Rondout. So, Cornell chartered the Rondout and Oswego on April 3, 1866, with himself as the first president. After a couple of bankruptcies, reorganizations, and renaming of the railroad, the Ulster & Delaware Railroad (U&D) emerged in 1875. The U&D's peak year came in 1913, with 676,000 passengers carried up into the Catskills plus substantial amounts of freight. By the time of the Great Depression of 1929 and thereafter, most of the passenger traffic had been lost to private cars on improved highways, buses and shared limousines; trucks had taken most of the non-commodity freight business; and the railroad was in serious financial trouble and a shadow of its former self. The New York Central acquired the failing U&D on February 1, 1932 Today, the Delaware and Ulster Railroad (DURR) is a heritage railroad based in Arkville, New York. This is their website: https://durr.org/about/crc-background/ The last commercial train ran through the Catskills in 1976. However, in the years following the rail line’s closure, several individuals with the support of the A. Lindsay & Olive B. O’Connor Foundation Inc. endeavored to give the Catskill Mountain Branch of the once great railroad a new life as a tourist attraction. The Catskill Rail Committee was formed to purchase and take over the right-of-way and to connect the leaders and stakeholders of towns that the tracks ran through for 45 miles in both Delaware and Schoharie Counties. A workable vision to preserve the railroad was forged and resulted in the launching of the “Delaware & Ulster Rail Ride” which in 1983 started offering scenic rides aboard vintage train cars from Arkville to Fleischmanns and Highmount and back. The D&U quickly became the biggest single tourism draw that Delaware County had to offer. This is the website of the group that promotes hiking along the former rail line: https://www.catskillscenictrail.org/about Today the “Catskill Scenic Trail” is also used by a related group that promotes hiking on 26 miles of a former railroad, now used for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, and horseback riding. Get out into the fresh air and explore the trail. The path was initially forged for the Ulster & Delaware Railroad, which operated until 1932.

The post card was published by the Jack Harmon Agency out of Stamford, New York. When I go online to find out about the company, I do not see that it still exists today.

Small can also mean Important!!

Locomotive #45 was built by Alco in 1956 as a 1600 h.p. RS-3, a B-B diesel. It is seen here as it rests in the yard of the Alton and Southern

Railway in East St. Louis, Illinois. This picture was taken on Saturday, June 19, 1965, by K. C. Henkels. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us this about the railroad and its history: The Alton and Southern Railroad was formed in 1910, and in 1913 it absorbed the Denverside Connecting Railway (founded in 1910), and the Alton and Southern Railway (founded in 1911). The company was operated as a subsidiary of the Aluminum Ore Company, which was itself a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), to serve the Bayer process bauxite-to-alumina refinery at Alorton, Illinois. Alcoa sold the line to the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW) in 1968, and it was reorganized as the Alton and Southern Railway. In 1972, CNW's share was sold to the St. Louis Southwestern Railway. In 1982, the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) took ownership of the Missouri Pacific share and then became full owner in 1996 with the acquisition of SSW parent Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The Alton and Southern is still a legally separate entity but is wholly owned by UP. This is what the actual company, the Alton and Southern Railway, says about its history. You can find it on their website https://www.altonsouthern.com/about/ Founded in 1910, Alton & Southern Railway has a rich history as a crucial railroad in the St. Louis region. With approximately 30 miles of mainline track, we serve various industries like chemicals, petroleum, metals, and manufacturing. As a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad, we benefit from a vast transportation network, including easy access to four Interstate highways, various river ports, and six Class-1 railroads, ensuring seamless connections nationwide. We prioritize safety, efficiency, and environmental stewardship, continuously investing in infrastructure and technology, and are committed to providing reliable services through its Union Pacific partnership.

The post card was published by Audio Visual Designs (AVD) in Earlton, New York. AVD was started in 1964 by Carl Sturner for the sole purpose of providing railfans with sound recordings of locos and trains as well as with photochrome postcards of trackside photos. These stunning color images were taken all over the country by some well-known photographers such as David Sweetland. The history and product line of AVD can be found on the company's website at www.audiovisualdesigns.com

Michigan Interstate... What is that?

The ALCO RS2 locomotives on the front of this post card have the Ann Arbor Railroad name on the side. The lead engine has a Michigan Interstate logo on its side. When Conrail began on April 1, 1976, the Ann Arbor Railroad ceased to exist. Michigan arranged for a new company, Michigan Interstate Railway, to run it, which lasted from October 1, 1977, to September 30, 1982. This last bit of information came from this website, which has a great article about the history of the Ann Arbor Railroad: https://www.trains.com/ctr/railroads/fallen-flags/remembering-the-ann-arbor-railroad/ The Ann Arbor Railroad (AA) was as much a steamship line as a railroad. Built from Toledo, Ohio, northwest to Frankfort, Mich., it existed for one reason — to move freight in car ferries across Lake Michigan to bypass Chicago. From 1910 to 1968, “the Annie” operated 320 car ferry route-miles versus 292 miles of railroad. During the 1940s, up to six ferries made the round trip from Boat Landing, as AA called its yard in Elberta on the south side of Frankfort harbor, to two Wisconsin and two Michigan Upper Peninsula ports. The boats ran year-round on a tight schedule, timed to match with three pairs of scheduled Toledo freights, where AA interchanged with five trunk lines. Well-kept 2-8-2s powered those short, fast trains across AA’s rolling profile until 1950, when Alco FA2s took over. The Wabash had eyed the Ann Arbor since the late 1890s, as the car ferry service fit into its expansion plans. On November 2, 1925, it took stock control, and soon, Wabash ordered the last ferry built for the Annie, the Wabash. Launched March 19, 1926, she was the largest Great Lakes car ferry to date. AA began to dieselize in 1941 with a 44-ton Whitcomb, adding two Alco S1s in 1944. By fall 1951, steam was done as AA finished its roster with 14 FA2s, 4 S3s, and 2 RS1s. The Eastern mergers of the 1960s ultimately doomed the old Ann Arbor. As planning for Penn Central went on, the Norfolk & Western (N&W) merged with Wabash, Nickel Plate, and two smaller roads in 1964. N&W wanted no part of the Ann Arbor and its costly ferries, so AA was foisted off on the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad (DT&I), which was profitable by the 1960s. With Interstate Commerce Commission approval, DT&I took over the Ann Arbor on August 31, 1963, Today, the last two AA car ferries and the two RS1s still exist, and a new Ann Arbor Railroad, owned by Watco, operates Toledo to Ann Arbor. Their website has a great video that tells us about the current owners. https://www.watco.com/service/rail/ann-arbor-railroad-aa/ Ann Arbor Railroad (AA) • Primary Commodities Watco moves any commodity, and on this railroad, it’s primarily auto parts and finished vehicles, along with bulk materials like flour, sugar, grain, plastics, sand, cement, recyclables, fertilizer, paper, lumber, and petroleum. • Track Miles • 82.43 • Track Capacity • 286 • Interchange Points • Diann, MI – IORY • Milan, MI – NS • Osmer, MI – GLC • Toledo, OH – CN, CSX, NS, WE • Year Watco Operations Began • 2013

The post card was published by that great mystery publisher www.Railcards.com out of Alameda, California.