I've Been Everywhere, Man!

The locomotive on the front of this post card has had quite the history. The information below is taken from this website: https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/North_Pacific_Coast_No._12_(Sonoma)

North Pacific Coast No. 12, named Sonoma is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive it was built by Baldwin in 1876 for the 36” gauge North Pacific Coast Railroad. It was named “Sonoma”. It probably hauled both passenger and freight trains on the eighty mile line between Sausalito and Duncans Mills, CA. In 1879, #12 was sold to the Nevada Central Railroad, renumbered #5 and named “General J. H. Ledlie” after the civil engineer then working for the railroad, who had also participated in building the transcontinental railroad as a Union Pacific employee. The locomotive worked as switcher and road engine until the Nevada Central line was abandoned in 1938. The locomotive stayed in storage for nearly forty years until it was moved to the newly built Central Pacific Railroad Passenger Station in 1977. Today the locomotive is on public display at the California State Railroad Museum while restored to its 1876 appearance by the museum, it is also displayed coupled to some narrow gauge passenger cars. The history of the Central Nevada Railway is taken from this website: https://utahrails.net/utahrails/nevada-central.php Nevada Central Railway was built between Battle Mountain (on the Central Pacific) and Austin (Clifton), Nevada. It was completed in February 1880 as a 3-foot narrow gauge railroad. Union Pacific purchased control of the road in June 1881 was part of a grand scheme to built its own line across Nevada, and to tap the booming mining business of central Nevada. The mining boom soon collapsed, and in October 1884, Union Pacific allowed the Nevada Central to default on its interest payments, forcing the road into bankruptcy. After its 1884 bankruptcy, the original owners of the Nevada Central prior to Union Pacific ownership, the Stokes family, took back ownership and reorganized the company as the Nevada Central Railroad in 1888. On January 31, 1938 all operations ended on the Nevada Central Railroad. The railroad operated 92.3 miles of line between Austin and Battle Mountain, Nevada, a station on the Southern Pacific-Western Pacific shared mainlines in central Nevada. The federal ICC had authorized the abandonment on December 20, 1937; all carload traffic was embargoed on December 31, 1937, and all operations ceased on January 31, 1938. Although common carrier operations ended, as well as the railroad's status as a public utility, its physical property was not to be abandoned, but would be sold for its salvage value and disposed of for the benefit of the railroad company.

It looks like the post card is a self-published post card by Shirley Burman, Photographer. She operated at 2648 Fifth Avenue in Sacramento, California – where this locomotive is currently on display. From our good friends at Wikipedia: Shirley Burman (born 1934) is a railroad photographer, historian of women's work in the railroad industry, and creator of the traveling photo exhibition, Women and the American Railroad. Burman received a BA in Art from the University of California-Davis in 1972. She was an illustrator for the California State Parks in 1974, and a documentary photographer for the U.S. federal government in 1976. She resumed employment with the California State Parks in 1978 as a photographer for the California State Railroad Museum's restoration projects. Since 1983, Burman has been a self-employed railroad photographer and designer. Together with her late husband, the railroad photographer Richard Steinheimer, she produced a book, Whistles Across the Land, in 1994. She lives in Sacramento, California. Burman established a non-profit corporation called The Women's Railroad History Project. It is a repository for oral histories, photographic and artifact collections, and other historical research. Selections from Burman's international traveling exhibitions Women and the American Railroad TM were compiled into a 1995 wall calendar "Women and the American Railroad."