Hand Coloured Utah

Ever since May 10, 1869 the United States of America was joined from east to west by the railroad. It used to go around the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Then in 1904 they built a "bridge" across the lake from Ogden to Lucin, cutting off about 45 miles of the route and some dangerous grades and curves. It was replaced by a causeway in the '50's. I have 15 postcards that help us to remember this trestle.
Eight of the cards are of sunset or sunrise. There is a brilliant orange hue in the sky and a reflection of the light in the water. Three of them are basically the same picture of the same train with the same people with the same sunset at the same point on the track. However, each one is different because they each come from different publishers. Each publisher has put a change to the picture so that it is not violating the copyright, I guess. the titles on the fronts of the cards are different, too. One has a brass grommet in the right margin; one was mailed in 1939; the other two were not mailed.
I have the same situation with three other cards. This time the same train is on the same point on the trestle. One train has a bare puff of smoke, the second is starting to steam and the third is at full steam. But they are all just leaving the midlake station going toward the same hills. In one the clouds are wispy, in the next they are obvious and in the third they are pronounced. Also in the third, the caption at the bottom says it is sunrise not sunset - although the description on the back says sunset. Again, different publishers touching up the same picture to suit their needs.
My favourite postcard of the 15 is of a diesel engine heading east on the trestle toward the midlake station - there are two tracks on the trestle at this point - with a bag of salt from the Great Salt Lake attached to a metal grommet in the right hand margin. Guess what is missing from one of the other postcards!!
The other postcards of mostly of the midlake station or parts thereof. The train companies mentioned on the cards are the Western Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific.
There is one postcard that shows the train going through the salt beds of the Great Salt Lake. It shows a man behind a plow behind a mule working the salt beds. It is blank on the back and has not been mailed.
The oldest card that I can prove was mailed on January 7th at 4:30 p.m. in 1907.

The Collection

Currently, I have 1977 postcards in my collection. Early on I knew that this would be a very difficult collection to keep track of. How would I know if I already have the particular card I am looking at in a tourist store? How will I be able to find a card I am looking for in the collection? I have come up with two solutions - one for each situation.
On my computer I have a "catalogue" of the cards. It is on an Excel spreadsheet program. The collection is divided into 6 categories: Diesels facing left, Diesels facing right, Steamers facing left, Steamers facing right, Electric trains and Special Cards. The explanations for the first five are obvious. The Special Cards are those cards that I have decided to keep but do not involve an actualy train engine. There are several cards that revolve around the Royal Gorge in Colorado. They show the terrain or the suspension bridge but no train engine. I consider these to be so closely related to the rest of the Royal Gorge collection that I dare not ignore them. There are similar cards for the Mt. Lowe incline in California and Pikes Peak (or is it Pike's Peak) you'll never know by looking at the postcards. I put the cards with two trains facing in two directions into this category, too. I have cards of individual cars (dining cars, sleepers, flat cars with load) without engines. These fall into my special cards category, too.
I have another code I use to help me identify where the print is on the cards. If the font on the list is bolded, the wording is on the front of the card.
Within my albums I have a different way of finding the cards. I have one album just for Canadian trains. The steamers start in the front of the book and work toward the middle; the diesels start in the back of the book and work forward. I have CN & CP at the beginning of the album followed by trains from each province from west to east. On the outside of the album I have written that this album is for "Canadian Trains". The second album is for what I have termed "hand coloured" and black and white cards. These are the very old postcards that do not originate from a coloured print but from a B&W one and are coloured at the printers. The B&W postcards also include those that have been turned into sepia prints. These are kept in categories by state. It is amazing how many of these cards came from Colorado.
In the rest of the albums (steamers & diesels) I start each with Burlington Northern, followed by Santa Fe, then Southern Pacific then Union Pacific. The rest of the cards are then divided into "F units" and other engine types.
My electric and special cards are kept separately.
Next time, I will start talking about specific members of my collection

Today is the first day

Today I begin my first blog. That's a funny name: Blog. But, I feel that if I don't start blogging I could be caught in a blog way behind the rest of the modern world.
The main subject of my blogs will be my train postcard collection. I am very proud of it. I contains some postcards that are over 100 years old (this is verified by the postmarks) and some that were recently printed. There are postcards of steam engines, diesels, electric trains and a few of which I am not sure.
I grew up in Arizona and southern California watching Santa Fe trains in Flagstaff, Southern Pacific trains in Phoenix and Union Pacific in Los Angeles. Today, I am living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - will have been for 25 years in July of this year. Therefore I watch Canadian Pacific and Canadian National trains.
I used to collect all sorts of train memorabilia, but decided that I would never have a "complete" collection of anything if I didn't specialize in some particular area. I chose train postcards because they take up very little room. I got my kick start in this collection during "Klondike Days" at Northlands here in Edmonton. Great Britian was the guest country and one of the booths had a rather large display of postcards with drawings of trains on the front. I made what I thought was a great deal with the vendor. I got over 50 postcards for a very good price. My official collecting days began.
Over the years I have made similar deals with other vendors. I remember a coin and stamp dealer in Calgary who told me take all the train postcards I wanted; I told him I couldn't afford them all right now. He said to go ahead and take them all and pay him by cheque each month until they were paid off. He didn't know me from Adam (except I was wearing clothes) and yet he trusted me to be true to the handshake deal. A few months later he was in Edmoton for a trade show and I handed him the last cheque in person, shook his hand, and told him how great it was to be trusted like that.
I had run out of face to face contacts with people selling postcards so I went on line - WOW! There are quite a few sites through which I can continue to enhance my collection. I will continue to do so.
My future blogs will be mostly about the postcards in my collection. Every once in a while I will share a memory that a particular postcard brings to mind. I might share how I came to own a postcard, I might talk about two or three that are similar.
I am looking forward to putting my thoughts out there in cyberspace for anyone to see, but, also for me to have a written record of my collection.