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.

It Was Fun While It Was Happening!!!

The locomotive on the front of this post card continues the locomotive theme of the past several blog posts. It is a General Electric U36B.

This picture was taken in 1975, sort of at the height of popularity for this railroad company: Auto-Train Corporation. It was the first well-know company to haul passengers and their vehicles all on the same train. The information below is taken from this website: https://themetrains.com/auto-train-main.htm "You'll never drive all the way again!", said the ad. And for ten glorious years you didn't have to. From December 6, 1971 to May 1, 1981 the auto-train Corporation took happy passengers -- and their cars -- over 1800 miles round trip from Washington, DC to sunny Florida aboard their red, white and purple auto-trains. In the late 1960s, the US government sponsored a study to determine if there was a market for trains that could carry both passengers and their autos as had been done successfully in Europe. The conclusion of the study was "yes". But the government also determined it could be run at a profit and so should be left to private industry. With almost all of the major railroads turning their passenger equipment over to Amtrak in the early 1970s, there would be no takers from among the usual suspects. Enter a young attorney named Eugene K. Garfield. While working as an assistant to the Transportation Secretary, Garfield became familiar with the government's study. The 33 year old used his personal savings to set up the Auto-Train Corporation in 1970. With financial backing from a NY investment bank, Garfield contracted with the SCL and the RF&P railroads to operate a train consisting of Auto-Train Corporation equipment from an Auto-Train terminal in Lorton, VA in the Washington, DC area to Sanford, FL just a few miles from the new Walt Disney World. With dozens of railroads eager to rid themselves of surplus passenger equipment, the Auto-Train Corporation was able to purchase some of the finest equipment ever built -- and at bargain prices. To create this new breed of train, the corporation needed to identify suitable auto carriers. The solution was found in Canadian National bi-level auto carriers. These would carry passengers' cars in enclosed safety and would be put at the front of the consist. And what a consist it was! Every coach was a dome car. The best domes of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific and Western Pacific were brought together with sleepers and diners from the ACL, SAL, L&N, N&W and others. Rounding out each consist was a steam generator car and, in later years, a caboose. The first train left Lorton on December 6, 1971 for the 856 mile trip to Sanford. The service was so successful that soon a second route was added -- from Louisville, KY to Sanford. The new service wasn't nearly as well received and put a drag on corporate finances. The next six years would be a struggle. Even as the Louisville service was reworked and wound down, a trio of accidents took their toll. Insurance premiums went up and passenger revenues went down. On Thursday April 30, 1981, the last auto-trains departed Lorton and Sanford, passing in the night. When they arrived at their destinations May 1, the Auto-Train Corporation was done.

The post card was published by Railcards.com I know absolutely nothing about them except that their mailing address was a post office box in Alameda, California. I have 204 of their post cards; this publisher is third on the list of publishers by quantity in my collection. And, yet, I can tell you nothing about the publisher.

Another Exaggerated Themed Post Card

In three days this post card will turn 114 years old. At least, it will be 114 years since it was mailed.

This is a post card that shows how great Edward H. Mitchell's imagination was. He was able, in 1909 - the copyright is in the upper left-had corder of the front of the card - to superimpose a bunch of oranges onto a gondola of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Then he added "1881 - A CARLOAD OF NAVEL ORANGES FROM __________ ". Another stroke of genius: the purchaser could add the city onto the front of the post card to boast to the reader where the sender was.

Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!!

The three locomotives featured on the front of this post card are hauling coal. The train has just crossed the summit of the Allegheny Mountains and

is entering the yards at Clifton Forge, Virginia. It will now have a down grade run along the James River to the Tidewater Area of Virginia. The train is operated by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Its earliest ancestor was the Louisa Railroad, which was incorporated on February 18, 1836. It’s first leg of track of 22 miles was quickly completed by December of 1837. Today, the trackage of the C&O is part of CSX Transportation. This website gives us the following details about the locomotives themselves: https://www.trains-and-railroads.com/ge-u30-b The GE U30B was a diesel-electric locomotive produced by GE Transportation between 1966 and 1975. It was a further development of the U28B, with a 3,000 hp (2,200 kW) 16-cylinder prime mover. The U30B competed with the EMD GP40 and the ALCO Century 430, but was not as successful as the GE U30C. The U30-B was manufactured between 1966 and 1976. They were of the C-C wheel configuration, which means that each truck had 3 powered axels They were 67 feet and 3 inches long with a service weight and adhesive weight of 363,000 pounds. It provided 91, 650 pound force of starting effort and could reach a top speed of 70 miles per hour. The engine that drove this was a V-16 diesel described officially as a GE-FDL-16 and the fuel tank held 3,000 gallons of diesel. All of this provided 3,000 horsepower to the train; it was the first GE manufactured locomotive to offer this. The U30B experienced several upgrades over the life of the production run. I have featured a couple of those changes in the previous two blog posts. About the title of this blog post and logo of the railroad: Wikipedia tells us that Chessie was a popular cat character used as a symbol of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O). Derived from an etching by Viennese artist Guido Grünewald, the image first appeared in a black and white advertisement in the September 1933 issue of Fortune magazine with the slogan "Sleep Like a Kitten." The advertisement makes no mention of the cat's name. When the ad generated a positive response, the railroad developed an advertising campaign around the image and chose the name Chessie as a derivation of the railroad's name.

The picture was taken by Mary Jayne Rowe and she is also the publisher of the post card. I have 243 of her post cards in my collection. As I was collecting the post cards, I noticed that her name appeared quite often. In fact, the only publisher from whom I have more post cards is Audio Visual Designs (333). I wrote to her and asked if she had a catalogue of her post cards; she sent me 42 pages!!

Just Got Traded to a New Team!

When the photo of this locomotive was taken, the new owner of the railroad company was the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN). However, the paint scheme on the locomotive on the front of this post card is that of the Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP), which the BN recently purchased. The Northern Pacific Railroad was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. The Northern Pacific was headquartered in Minnesota, first in Brainerd, then in the state capital of Saint Paul. It had a tumultuous financial history; the N.P. merged with other lines over a century later in 1970 to form the modern Burlington Northern Railroad, which in turn merged with the famous Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to become the renamed BNSF Railway in 1996, operating in the western U.S. It has a long and interesting history, and this website does a very good job of presenting it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railway The locomotive on the front of this post card is a General Electric (GE) U33C model. It was a modification of GE’s U30C locomotive, which began production in September of 1967. The U33C (produced in 1968) was one of GE's most powerful six-motored road-switchers, and one of the last models made by GE using the “old technology” before they developed the more technologically advanced "Dash 7" line. The U33C was General Electric's first six-motored model to sport a noticeably flared rear radiator; needed to handle the unit's 3,300 horsepower using the 7FDL16 prime mover. This model of locomotive sold 275 units by the time GE started to produce Dash 7’s. These two websites can fill you in on the details of the U33C https://rapidotrains.com/ho-scale/diesel-locomotives/u33c-u36c.html and one of my favourites https://www.american-rails.com/38213.html

The post card was published by Railcards.com

Is that a "Bluebird" that I See?

This website tells us almost everything we want to know about the front of this post card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_U34CHU34CH

What we are seeing is one locomotive of a fleet of 32 that were built by General Electric for Erie-Lackawanna and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). The locomotive is a U34CH fitted with heating equipment to handle commuter trains in northern New Jersey. This picture was taken in 1972. The U34CH is a 3,600 hp passenger diesel locomotive built by General Electric between 1970 and 1973. In total, 33 U34CH units were built; 32 were built for the New Jersey Department of Transportation and operated by the Erie Lackawanna Railway and, later, Conrail, with the last unit coming as a later rebuild of a GE U30C for the New York MTA. The 32 initial locomotives operated with new Pullman Standard push-pull coaches. The units were intended to replace locomotives in suburban commuter service out of Hoboken, New Jersey. The U34CH was the first GE locomotive to use steel crowned pistons to develop 3,600 hp and was the first commuter locomotive built with shaft driven HEP–that is, a Head End Power alternator driven by the locomotive prime mover rather than by a separate diesel. In the next sentence, F indicates a cylinder bore of 9 inches; D identifies the engine configuration with the master and auxiliary connecting rods; and L refers to the service as “locomotive”. To provide HEP at the proper AC frequency the FDL-16 prime mover ran at a constant 900 RPM, so traction horsepower was 3430 minus whatever was going into HEP. By contrast, when not providing HEP, the FDL-16 could produce 3600 traction horsepower at its usual 1050 RPM. To show their NJDOT ownership, the units were painted in a dark blue and silver paint scheme with NJDOT logo and were often called "Bluebirds" by rail enthusiasts. The U34CHs on the weekends were sometimes used in Erie Lackawanna freight service, often being on freight duty from Saturday to Sunday and returning to commuter service Monday morning.

The post card was published by Railcards.com

Yours, Mine and Ours

General Electric Locomotive Division, General Electric Leasing Corporation, Burlington Northern come together to make this post card work. The paint scheme on the locomotives on the front of this post card is that of

the General Electric Leasing Corporation (LMX). Not only did General Electric (GE) build locomotives, but they also leased them to railroads. The General Electric Leasing Corporation was acquired by Wells Fargo in September of 2015. This was then merged with Wabtec to form Wabtec Freight, which has continued to operate General Electric’s leasing operations. The locomotives themselves are Dash8-39B models from General Electric. This website gives a good, concise history of this model of locomotive. https://trains-and-locomotives.fandom.com/wiki/GE_B39-8 The General Electric B39-8 (Dash 8-39B, or simply "Dash 8") is a type of four-axle, 3,900hp diesel locomotive first built in 1984, and again from 1987-1988. 145 were sold only to Southern Pacific (SP), LMX Leasing, and Santa Fe (ATSF). During the mid-1980's, railroads became interested in purchasing more modern, high-horsepower, fuel-efficient, and otherwise more economical diesel locomotives to replace the preceding so-called "ancient" diesels. To meet these needs, GE developed the Dash 8 line of revolutionary, economical, high-tech, high-horsepower diesel-electric locomotives which included microprocessor controls that monitored everything under the hood via computerized sensors and displayed stats from a panel located the cab of the locomotive. Other features included automatic engine starters, a doppler-controlled wheel-slip system, as well as having an advanced engine cooling system reminiscent to EMD's “Tunnel Motor” cooling system design used on the SD40T-2 and other subsequent "Tunnel Motor" series models, while also retaining a similar design found on previous GE models. The testbed line for the early Dash 8 models officially debuted with the introduction of the B36-8 and C36-8 between 1983-1984. The B39-8 was a complete success and became an almost instant contender to EMD's GP60. Yet not too long after the B39-8's initial production, the more popular and externally similar B40-8 was introduced, thus eliminating the B39-8 entirely from GE's catalog, and the six-axle C40-8 overtook the latter in 1987.

The picture on this post card is taken on the Burlington Northern line at Loram, Montana in 1992. The post card was published by Railcards.com and he usually did not give photo credit for the pictures on the post cards he published.