At one point, in the Royal Gorge, the river and the two canyon walls are so close together that there was no easy way to lay the tracks for the train to pass through. A genious engineer (civil, not train) thought of laying a bridge that was suspended over the water rather than held up by piers. They inserted girders into the canyon walls and suspended the bridge for the train to get through the canyon.These three post cards show the bridge from the same angle.
The top card and the card on the right (with the steam engines obviously drawn in)are from the same printer. They are both embossed. You can feel where the girders are in the picture as well as some of the mountains. When you turn them over the writing surface is not even. The words Post Card are both over an Amercian flag on a staff laid on its side.
The card on the left looks suspiciously similar to the card on the right. The big difference is that the picture is much more fuzzy. The blotches on the canyon wall to our right are in the exact same locations. And, it looks like a second steam engine is right behind the one on the bridge. When I turn it over I see that it is printed by a different company. The Post Card words are surrounded by an ornate swirl.
I love the creativity of the printers and publishers of this eara. One of the cards was mailed on June 9, 1908 at 2:30 PM. I guess everyone was making enough profit from selling these cards that they didn't have to worry about copyright infringement, etc.
This type of duplication is very common and I see many times over in my collection of train postcards. I know it happened in other types of cards, too.
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If you know anything about the history of the cards, the trains or the locations, please add them.