Goin' to Florida

The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway

to Key West, located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line started in 1905 and was completed in 1912; the line was in daily passenger and freight service until its destruction by a hurricane in 1935. My wife and I joke a lot about cars driving down the road for kilometers with their turn signals on. We usually alert the other person by saying,"Guess he's goin' to Florida." Then the other person knows to look for a car with continuous turn signalling happening. I have to admit that she has asked me if I was going to Florida a couple of times. Today's blog post is taking us to Florida without the benefit of an ongoing turn signal. We are looking at three of my seven post cards that highlight the Florida East Railway's Long Key Viaduct. I will first tell you the story, then talk about the publisher of each post card at the end. I will simply intersperse the fronts of the post cards through the narrative as taken mostly from Wikipedia. The

construction problems were formidable; labor turnover was frequent and the cost was prohibitive. The first portion of the line, from Homestead to Key Largo, was across swamp land. Thankfully, the dredging of the drainage canals to clear the swamps provided the material to build up the roadbed. Worse than any other challenge was the weather: a hurricane in September 1906 destroyed the initial work on the Long Key Viaduct and killed more than 100 laborers. Hurricanes in 1909 and 1910 destroyed much of the completed railroad. After these hurricanes, work resumed at a faster pace — The owner of the railroad was 80 years old and wanted to ride all the way to Key West on his railroad. The completion of Seven Mile Bridge assured many that the line would soon be completed. Henry Flagler, by then blind, arrived in Key West on January 22, 1912, aboard his private rail car "Rambler", telling a welcoming crowd, “Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled.” Regular service on the 156-mile extension — dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" — began the following day, with through sleepers between New York and Key West with connections at Key West for passenger steamers and car ferries bound for Havana. Flagler died less than 18 months later in May 1913.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane washed away approximately 40 miles of the Middle Keys section of the line. In addition, the Long Key Fishing Camp was destroyed, along with a rescue train which was — with the exception of locomotive #447 — overturned by the storm surge at Islamorada, Florida. With Flagler gone, the railroad was unwilling to repair a line that had never repaid its construction cost — an unknown figure. It was later determined that the total cost of what had been derisively nicknamed "Flagler's Folly" exceeded $50 million ($1.31 billion today), all from his personal fortune.

The top post card, above was mailed in 1914, soon after the viaduct opened. It was published by the H. S. Kress Company. A publisher and large distributor of postcards through their national chain of Five & Dime stores. They were purchased by Genesco in 1964 who slowly began shutting the business down.

The middle post card was published by the Leighton & Valentine Company

out of New York City. Hugh C. Leighton was a printer and major publisher of national view-cards, especially scenes of New England. They printed most of their cards in four distinct styles employing halftone lithography. Most used a simple soft yet highly recognizable RGB pallet. While some cards were printed at their plant in the U.S. most were manufactured in Frankfort, Germany. Almost all their cards were numbered. They merged with Valentine & Sons in 1909.

The last of the post cards was published by the E.C. Kropp Company:

a publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name. They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S. This post card is an excellent example of a linen post card. The texture and weight of the card are obvious when one holds it and holds it up to the light. I hope you can see the texture in this close-up:

Angels Flight Railway in Los Angeles

Colette and I won a trip to Los Angeles through a radio station that we listen to and support. We stayed in a hotel in the financial district about 6 or 8 blocks from the Union Train Station. Just a few blocks away from our hotel was an even more famous (with me, at least) railway station: Angels Flight Railway.

When I was much younger… in the 1960s …our family went to the Angels Flight Railway and rode the funicular. I don’t remember how many times we went up and down Bunker Hill. It was great. I still have a ticket to ride Angels Flight from that time in my box of memorabilia. Originally, I kept it because I thought that we would someday return and ride it again. I didn’t know much about the railroad then. But, to date I have found lots of very interesting background and information.
Angels Flight was the result of the efforts of Colonel James Ward Eddy, a Civil War veteran. He began construction of Angels Flight (a two foot, six inch gauge railroad) on August 2, 1901. The railway ended up being a 33 percent grade for 315 feet. He opened the railway on December 31st of the same year. On Opening Day more than 2,000 people took the two funicular cars, Olivet and Sinai, between Hill and Olive Streets (two blocks) in downtown Los Angeles.

Colonel Eddy was born on May 30, 1832 in Java, New York and he died in Los Angeles on April 13, 1916. He moved to Illinois in 1853 where he studied law and became a lawyer and friend of Abraham Lincoln, so much so, that during the Civil War he enlisted in the Army and joined those whose job it was to protect Washington, D. C. After the war, he helped to build a branch line from Flagstaff, Arizona to Phoenix for the Santa Fe railroad. Then, he moved to Los Angeles in 1895. He was part of the project to bring power lines from the Kern River to L.A.
Six years after moving to Los Angeles, he built Angels Flight with his own money. It just so happens that this railway is very close to the area of town in which the colonel lived. The first rides cost one penny and they took passengers from one station to the next in about a minute.
In May of 1969 Angels Flight was closed down so the city government could redevelop the area and displace over 20,000 people. They put Angels Flight into storage. On February 24, 1996 Angels Flight was opened half a block south of the original site. Since then it has had several accidents and many safety violations. Today, it sits on display for all to see and none to ride.
You can get more information about Angels Flight on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_Flight)or at http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/will-angels-flight-ever-roll-again/article_f99ee604-bc49-11e3-abe6-0019bb2963f4.html or at http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/23044083
These two post cards show Angels Flight in its early years. Both post cards are from before March 1, 1907. The backs of them clearly show that one can only write the address on that side. The one on the left, above, is by the Detroit Publishing Co. There is a great source of information about the Detroit Company at (http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/dpc/how/animas3.asp and at http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersd.html The right-hand one is published by the M. Rieder Company who published view-cards of the West and of Native Americans. His cards were printed in Germany except those contracted out to Edward H. Mitchell in the United States.
The left one below is also from Detroit Publishing and the right-hand one is from M. Rieder.

Don't Try This at Home!

I cannot imagine being able to or wanting to stand inside one of the Spiral Tunnels on “The Big Hill” just east of Field, British Columbia. It just isn't a safe thing to do!! But that is exactly what the photographer for Gowan & Sutton Company must have done to get this beautiful shot of Cathedral Mountain.

Then, in order to sell a very impressive post card to someone, they hand tinted the real photo card. I can see a light shade of blue surrounding Cathedral Mountain; there is a slight shading of green on the side of the mountain, too.

The photographer was probably standing at the opening of the top of the Lower Spiral Tunnel in the base of Mt. Stephen. The track continues to curve to the left, which will take it to the Upper Spiral Tunnel built into the base of Cathedral Mountain.

An eastbound train leaving Field climbs a moderate hill, goes through two short, straight tunnels on Mt. Stephen, under the Trans-Canada Highway, across the Kicking Horse River and into the Lower Spiral Tunnel in Mt. Ogden. It spirals to the left up inside the mountain for 891-m and emerges 15-m higher. The train then crosses back over the Kicking Horse River, under the highway a second time and into the 991-m tunnel in Cathedral Mountain. The train spirals to the right, emerging 17-m higher and continues to the top of Kicking Horse Pass.

I have written in my past blogs about this area that straddles British Columbia and Alberta in the Rocky Mountains. See my 2013 entries from February 17th (probably from Cathedral Mountain looking back at Mt. Stephen), March 22nd and April 5th as well as Nov. 8, 2014. I have also written about the publisher/printer on April 12th and August 2nd of 2013 and February 1st of 2014.

Gowan Sutton (1921 – 1960) was a publisher of real photo and printed postcards of the Canadian West. Not only did they produce cards depicting large cities, they captured many hard to reach views within the Canadian Territories. Many of their cards were hand tinted in a simple manner striving for style rather than realism, which created cards in vastly differing quality. While the real photo cards were made in Canada their printed cards were made in England.

Next to Impossible

These two post cards are also (like the previous two blog posts) Real Photo Cards printed by Byron Harmon. They look very similar to each other. Both are labelled by Mr. Harmon as "774. Mt. Chancellor." Both show a train coming out of a tunnel or around a corner with Mt. Chancellor in the background.







There are several differences, however. 1) The exposure is different - the bottom post card is overexposed;

2) The title of the post card is in a slightly different location - in the top one the 774 touches the train tracks;

3) The engines are different - the top one has a straight line across the front of the "cow catcher" while the bottom one has a curve in front of the boiler. This last difference is so stark that I wonder if Mr. Harmon wasn't experimenting with some sort of "photo-shopping" with this picture!!

You can see that the engine number on the post card is 5178. I found at this website: http://members.shaw.ca/cprsteam/p1.htm that this was a Mikado type of engine with a 2-8-2 wheel arrangement. It was built in 1912 by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

It was next to impossible to find any information about Mt. Chancellor. What I did find was that Mount Chancellor is a 8,826 feet tall. It is located between the towns of Field and Golden in British Columbia, Canada. It is the 515th highest mountain in British Columbia and the 1,105th highest mountain in Canada. - See more at: http://peakery.com/chancellor-peak-canada/#sthash.n5Ok9Ygg.dpuf

In trying to find information about Mt. Chancellor, I found many other copies of this post card out there for sale. The prices ranged from $2.99 to $5.99 USD.