The Largest.... EVER!

The locomotive shown on the front of this post card is truly an essential part of this Express Train as declared in the title on the card: "Canadian Pacific

Railway Express Train". The driving wheels are 84 inches in diameter; that means that each revolution of the wheels moved the train forward 22 feet. Once the pistons got into the rhythm, this locomotive could easily go 60 miles an hour. These were the largest driving wheels ever used on the trains of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) used this particular locomotive to haul passengers from Montreal to Ottawa and back. It was the CPR's attempt to cut into the lucrative business of the Canada Atlantic Railway, which already had a similar route. The CPR's 113 mile long tracks were completed in 1898 and the first passenger trains started running in the fall of the next year. The train could make the trip in two hours and 20 minutes.

The locomotive pictured on the front of this post card is an Atlantic-type of engine (using the Whyte system of classification) which means that the wheel arrangement was 4-4-2. You can see that the pistons have two chambers in the front of the driving wheels. This is a clue that the locomotive used the Vauclain system to drive the wheels. The system used the steam from the boiler twice; once at high pressure and the exhaust from this became a lower pressure piston driver. This system was said to be more economical, but it turned out that these savings were offset by the extra wear and tear on the system.

This locomotive was built by the CPR's DeLorimer Works at Montreal in 1899 and scrapped in 1917.

The post card was published by the Valentine & Sons Publishing Company. They began publishing in 1907 in Montreal, so a picture of a locomotive like this would make perfect sense for them to print. This was published by the Canadian office for Valentine’s of Dundee, Scotland. They published souvenir books, greeting cards and view-cards of Canadian scenery in sets numbered with a three digit prefix and a three digit suffix (you can see it in the bottom right-hand corner of the post card). These tinted halftone and collotype cards were printed in Great Britain (as is mentioned on the back of the card, running up the left side of the card. Valentine sold their Canadian branch in 1923.