Siblings in Action

The locomotives on the front of this post card are both products of EMD (Electro-Motive Diesel) of General Motors. The lead locomotive is #777, a GP-7; the second one, #200, is a GP-9. Both locomotives are in the livery colours of the Great Smoky Mountains Railway. They are providing the power for an excursion train on Southern Railway's former Murphy Branch. This excerpt from the website of the Great Smoky Mountains Railway tells us the history of the line; https://gsmr.com/history/ The Murphy Branch of the Western North Carolina Railroad delivered thousands of mountaineers from the wilderness of their landlocked hills. A year after iron rails reached Asheville in 1880, workers scattered to the west of the city, digging, filling, and blasting an extension of the line that stretched 116 miles to Murphy, providing thousands with a path to reach the outside world. The iron horse beat riding a wagon, but in many ways the young railroad was still primitive. In 1892, a visitor from Chicago described it as “little more than two streaks of rust and a right-of-way.” With tongue in cheek, he told the Chicago Tribune, “when the wind is just right, the fastest train on the line, the ‘Asheville Cannon Ball,’ can make 10 miles an hour.” Rails changed the way of life for Western North Carolina residents. Mercantile business was commodities for a few of the bare necessities. Conveniences and luxuries were not even dreamed of and cash was hard to come by. The iron rails brought a flood of salesmen who peddled oil lamps that superceded tallow candles and New England “factory cloth” to replace scratchy, uncomfortable homespun. From door to door they sold books, pump organs, enlarged pictures, jewelry, lightning rods, baubles and doodads. Passenger business was so good by the turn of the 20th century that six passenger trains ran every day between Asheville and Lake Junaluska and four daily between Asheville and Murphy. It was not easy to cut this branch line through the mountains. If it had not been for the practical, self-educated engineer Capt. J. W. Wilson, a rigidly honest and industrious man, it might not have been accomplished for years. One of Capt. Wilson’s most challenging tasks was the grade on the west side of the Balsams that was steep and curvy, with gaping ravines. His second obstacle was the 836-foot Cowee Tunnel through a shaky mountain west of Dillsboro. High iron topped the Balsam Mountains at 3,100 feet, at the time the highest elevation of any railroad in the Eastern United States. The railroad was built by convicts working under the gun. In one of the most chilling accidents during construction, 19 inmates drowned in the Tuckasegee River at the mouth of the tunnel. Crossing the river to work, the raft carrying the iron-shackled convicts capsized and all aboard, except for guard Fleet Foster and convict Anderson Drake, died in the waters. Foster was rescued by Drake, who stole the guard’s wallet while pulling him to shore. When the wallet was found in Drake’s duffel, he was whipped and put to work in the tunnel at hard labor instead of receiving a hero’s honor. Those who died were buried in unmarked graves on top of a small hill near the mouth of the tunnel. In the early years of the 20th century, there were a number of runaways on Balsam Mountain and a couple of wrecks inside Cowee Tunnel and in the river, but loss of life was small. As improvements were made to the railroad, accidents declined. The Murphy Branch experienced its heaviest use during wartime, in the early 1940s when the massive Fontana Dam was constructed. Thousands of carloads of cement, equipment, and other materials reached the construction site by rail on a spur line built from Bushnell to Fontana. Huge shipments of copper ore from mines in the western end of North Carolina and Copperhill, Tennessee, increased the line’s tonnage. In the 1920s, ribbons of concrete crawled through the mountains, linking towns together. With the increasing popularity of the automobile, passenger traffic on the Murphy Branch, then owned by the sprawling Southern Railway System, began to decline. Southern discontinued all passenger traffic on the Murphy Branch on July 16th, 1948, ending 64 years of service that had opened Western North Carolina to the outside world. When freight traffic dropped off by 1985, Norfolk Southern closed the Andrews to Murphy leg of the Murphy Branch and the State of North Carolina purchased the Dillsboro to Murphy tracks to keep them from being destroyed. By 1988, many entities had come together to form the Great Smoky Mountains Railway, which then began running passenger excursions. Rolling stock for the GSMR was purchased from various railroads around the nation. The Dillsboro to Nantahala route was one of the most scenic on the Murphy Branch and the excursion trains caught on right away. Upward of 200,000 passengers enjoy the scenery and the experience of a true operational railroad each year aboard passegner excursion trains. American Heritage Railways purchased the GSMR in December of 1999. The Great Smoky Mountains Railway operates today as the newly organized Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.

The picture on the front of the post card is provided by Jim Wrinn; the post card was published by Mary Jayne's Railroad Specialties in 1994.

Still Going Strong after all these Years

The locomotive on the front of this post card is a GP-7M, owned by the

Altlana & St. Andrews Bay Railroad, at that time. Things have changed for the railroad since this picture was taken in 1972. This website provides a full history of the railroad. I have excerpted parts of it below. https://www.american-rails.com/asab.html The Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay Railway (A&StAB) was incorporated on February 14, 1906, by A. B. Steele, a noted lumberman based in Atlanta. Steele had recently purchased large tracts of land south of Dothan, Alabama and was attempting to have the timber transported by rail to a newly established port in the Northern Panhandle of Florida. Working with another lumber magnate, R.L. McKenzie, who owned tracts of land in Florida the two agreed to complete the railroad to the Gulf Coast at the small town of Harrison, later renamed Panama City. The first 30 miles between Dothan and Cottondale (Florida) were constructed very quickly and neared Panama City by late 1906. However, the final 11 miles to the coast became controversial when the E. E. Saunders Company did not want to grant the railroad access over its property. Eventually, this issue was settled, and the line was completed in 1908 consisting of 81 miles. The A&StAB boasted three interchange partners along its system; two were located at its northern terminus of Dothan (Central of Georgia and Atlantic Coast Line) while another with the Louisville & Nashville was established at Cottondale. In 1930 it was acquired by the International Paper Company, which maintained control for the next several decades. Both World Wars proved fruitful for the railroad in terms of traffic; after the second World War A&StAB still moved a substantial level of freight, enabling it to earn Class I status by January of 1947. That same year it fully dieselized its fleet of thirteen Alco RS1s, a pair of S2s, and a single F3A. Other new diesels purchased later were all Electro-Motive products including GP7s, SD9s, a GP39, a GP40, and a trio of GP38-2s. In 1994 the railroad was sold to the Rail Management Corporation, which officially renamed it as the Bay Line Railroad. On the first of June, 2005 Genesee & Wyoming took over the system and continues to operate it today.

The post card was published by the ever elusive Railcards.com company out of Alameda, California

A Beautiful GP-7 in a Beautiful Setting

In the past two weeks I have written about the GP-7 locomotives on the fronts of those post cards. Today’s locomotive is also a GP-7 locomotive.

Instead of adding more information about the locomotive, I am going to share some background about the railroad line on which this train is operating. It is crossing the Moat Brook Trestle enroute to the station in Conway, New Hampshire. The railroad on which it is running is called the Conway Scenic Railroad. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us the following about the Railroad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Scenic_Railroad The Conway Scenic Railroad was formed by Dwight Smith, who was an employee of the Boston and Maine Railroad in the late 1960s. After years of negotiations, Smith was able to convince his employer to sell a portion of the Conway Branch, which it planned to abandon, to him and two local businessmen in 1974, and the Conway Scenic Railroad began that year. In 1999, the original owners were bought out by husband and wife Russ and Dot Seybold and on January 30, 2018, the railroad was sold again to Profile Mountain Holdings Corp. Today, the railroad operates over two historic railway routes: a line from North Conway to Conway that was formerly part of the Conway Branch of the Boston and Maine Railroad, and a line from North Conway through Crawford Notch to Fabyan that was once part of the Mountain Division of the Maine Central Railroad. The Conway line is owned by Conway Scenic and leases the Mountain Division that is owned by the State of New Hampshire. The railroad's main terminal is in historic downtown North Conway in the Mount Washington valley. The North Conway station complex has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979. The railroad operates passenger trains out of its station in North Conway Village year-round. The railroad also operates the Mountaineer train from North Conway, through Crawford Notch up to Fabyan Station from May through November each year.

The photo on the post card was provided by Dennis Adams and published by Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialities in 1997.

Faux Geep 20

Last week I wrote about the very popular Geep 7 locomotive by EMD. These locomotives were so popular that some railroad companies went to extreme lengths to stretch their useful lives. The locomotive on the front of

this post card is an example of this happening - not to a Geep 7, but to a Geep 9. The EMD GP9 is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division between 1954 and 1963. The GP9 succeeded the GP7 as the second model of EMD's General Purpose (GP) line, incorporating a new sixteen-cylinder engine which generated 1,750 horsepower, as opposed to the 1500 horsepower in the Geep 7. During the 1970s, to extend lives of aging fleets of GP7s and GP9s, many railroads rebuilt and upgraded them, changing their appearance in the process. Milwarukee Road converted 54 GP9s like this one, their #950, calling them "GP20s". But, a GP20 plaque does not a GP 20 make. EMD did make a GP20C-ECO, but that is not what this is. See this for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_GP20C-ECO I include the scan of the back of this post card, just out of habit. I know nothing of the publisher: www.railcards.com

Setting a New Trend

The two locomotives you see on the front of this post card are Geep 7s.

The first diesel powered locomotives appeared on the American railroad scene in the middle of the 1920s. These locomotives were used mostly for rail yard switching because the locomotives themselves were small and did not have a lot of horsepower. In 1934 Burlington Railroad introduced the Zephyr streamlined passenger train. It was diesel powered and could achieve speeds over 100 miles per hour. The railroad industry took notice. However, the transition from steam to diesel was slowed by World War II when locomotive factories were more focused on war production than on modernization. After the war, railroads started to replace their steam with diesels en masse. Still recovering from their focus on the war effort, most railroads were not interested in spending their hard-earned cash for diesels locomotives that would probably spend most of their lives in services in yards and on secondary route. To satisfy this need General Motor’s Electro Motive Division (EMD) designed the GP7 as cheaply as possible. The locomotive was also given the name “General Purpose”. This was shortened to “Geep”; so, the locomotives you see on the front of this post card are called Geep 7s. To keep costs down, EMD incorporated as many redundancies into the model as possible, enabling the GP7 to perform practically any task from switching and branch line assignments to general road service. The GP7 utilized EMD's standard prime mover at the time - also found in the popular F7 - the 16-cylinder, model 567B. Internal components were also similar; a model D12B main generator, D27C traction motors, and Blomberg trucks. The GP7 was offered in six different gear ratios, depending on a railroad's needs. The low cost encouraged railroads to replace their steam locomotives. By about 1960, the conversion was basically finished. The “Geep 7” was so effective and cost-efficient and useful that the total built was 2,729 between October of 1949 and May of 1954. For a great history of the "Geep 7" (and following models) go to https://www.american-rails.com/9227.html

The picture on the front of the post card was taken by Robert R. Harmen. Robert has published at least twelve articles in Railfan, Trains, CTC Board, Short Line, and probably something else. The post card was published by Audio Visual Designs. Established in 1964 by Carl H. Sturner of Earlton, NY, Audio-Visual Designs originally focused on providing railroad post cards and reel to reel audio tapes of trains in action. I have 333 of their post cards in my collection; that is 10% of my collection!! Here is a link to their website: https://www.audiovisualdesigns.com/

Ever Bigger and Better

The railroad company shown on the front of this post card is one of the

ancestors of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad of today. It all began with the small St. Paul & Pacific and, by the time of his passing in 1917, the GN was a transcontinental carrier of more than 8,000 miles. This website provides a great short history of James Hill's involvement in the railroad history: https://www.bnsf.com/news-media/railtalk/heritage/jjhill.html The Great Northern Railway (GN) was the result of the foresight of James Jerome Hill. Hill was a Canadian-American businessman who settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. At 18, he began his career in the steamboat trade, and after 20 years, he became interested in investing and joined a group of powerful investors called the “Associates.” The Associates purchased the nearly bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (SP&P) in 1878, and a year later, the SP&P properties were reorganized as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba (SPM&M), with Hill becoming president in 1882. Hill became known as “The Empire Builder” as his dedication to railroad expansion led to the growth and development of the United States. Over the next three decades, Hill pursued the expansion of his rail line north to Canada and west toward the Pacific coast. Also in 1889, the railroad (now the Minneapolis & St. Cloud Railway) was renamed Great Northern Railway. GN’s Pacific Coast expansion began in 1890 near Havre, Montana, with the final spike connecting Seattle to the East driven near Scenic, Washington, in 1893. Then he purchased the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. These three railroad lines would become part of Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) when they merged with the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) in 1970, fulfilling one of Hill’s lifelong dreams more than 50 years after his death. BN merged with the Santa Fe Railway in 1995 to create BNSF.

The picture on the front of the post card is a 3600 horsepower F-45 "cowl" unit showing off its new "Big Sky Blue" paint scheme in 1969. The post card was published by Lyman E. Cox of Sacramento, California. I have 19 of his post cards in my collection. The picture was provided to him courtesy of the Great Northern Railway.

Things Evolve

The locomotive on the front of this post card is an example of General

Motors' Electro-Motive Diesel F40C passenger diesel. It is working for the North West Suburban Mass Transit (NWSMT) as number 43, “The Village of East Dundee”. Below is the history of Metra, the service into which the NWSMT eventually evolved. It is taken directly from the Metra website at: https://metra.com/about-metra Metra is the service mark used for rail service in northeast Illinois since 1985. But behind that simple name lies a convoluted history and a complex, multi-layered system. To understand how Metra operates, it really helps to know how Metra came about. Chicago has always been the railroad center of the nation, and it has had commuter rail service almost as long as it has had trains. Rail service peaked in the 1930s when Chicago had the largest public transportation system in the world. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the system was failing, with the CTA, private suburban bus companies, and commuter railroad companies experiencing big financial losses. To keep the system running, the General Assembly created the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in 1974. At first the RTA was purely an oversight and funding agency. It did not directly operate rail service but instead paid private railroad companies through purchase-of-service agreements to do so. It also began to reverse decades of disinvestment in the overall rail system. In 1980, the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Rail Corporation (NIRCRC) was created as a separate operating unit to run commuter rail service on behalf of the RTA. In 1982, after the Rock Island and the Milwaukee Road railroads went bankrupt, NIRCRC was directly operating commuter service on those lines (Rock Island, Milwaukee District West and Milwaukee District North). In 1983, the General Assembly reorganized the structure and funding of the RTA and also placed the operating responsibilities on three separate service boards: the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the Suburban Bus Division (PACE), and the Commuter Rail Division (CRD). The CRD was now responsible for supervising all commuter rail transportation in northeast Illinois through purchase of service agreements with various railroad companies, including NIRCRC, which continued to operate as a separate public corporation. Due to the complicated and patchwork nature of commuter rail at the time, the CRD in 1985 came up with the name “Metra” as a service mark for the system as a whole (short for “Metropolitan Rail”). The idea was to bring a unifying identity to all the various components, no matter who owned or operated them. Therefore, CRD and the entities it contracts with to operate the rail services in the northeast Illinois region, including NIRCRC, all use the “Metra” service mark. That system still is in place, although the ownership and/or operators of several lines have changed. Today, NIRCRC operates commuter service on the Metra Electric, Rock Island, Southwest Service, Heritage Corridor, North Central Service and the two Milwaukee lines. The three UP lines are operated by Union Pacific, and the BNSF line is run by BNSF Railway. This week I have focused on Metra and the NWSMT. Next week, I will share more information about the EMD F40 series of locomotives.

This photo was taken in 1974. Because it was published by Railcards.com there is no photo credit given.