Still Going Strong after all these Years (the railroad, not the locomotive)

The locomotive on the front of this post card is working for the Burlington Route, as you can see on the tender. It is number 3003.

The complete name of the Burlington Route is the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The following information comes from Wikipedia: The earliest predecessor of this railroad, the Aurora Branch Railroad, was chartered by act of the Illinois General Assembly on October 2, 1848. The Illinois General Assembly chartered the Aurora Branch Railroad on February 12, 1849, to build a branch of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad to Aurora,[1] which it opened on September 2, 1850. Another amendment, passed February 28, 1854, authorized the company to build east from Aurora to Chicago via Naperville, and changed its name to Chicago and Southwestern Railroad. The latter provision was never acted upon,[5] and was repealed by an act of February 14, 1855, which instead changed the name to Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q).[6] The Aurora-Chicago line was opened on May 20, 1864, by which time the CB&Q had, through acquisitions, acquired a main line from Chicago to Galesburg, where it split into branches for Burlington and Quincy. This website provides some interesting colour commentary on the Burlington Route. https://www.american-rails.com/cbq.html Some railroads were seemingly destined to become strong, profitable operations. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy was one such example. Its history traces back to the pre-Civil War period when trains near or west of the Mississippi River remained a relative novelty. During the mid-19th century the "Q's" earliest predecessor had established through service to Chicago and then spent the next several decades rapidly expanding. Its slogan, "Everywhere West," was quite befitting for this classic Midwestern granger. While the CB&Q did operate many secondary, agricultural branches it also boasted important through corridors to the Twin Cities, Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, southern Montana, and even reached the Gulf Coast! The Burlington was also quite close with the communities it served and highly visible in the public eye. It maintained an impressive fleet of high-class trains in addition to hosting its allying roads' transcontinental services. The long sought merger with the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle, finally became a reality in early 1970 forming the gigantic Burlington Northern system. Today, all of the Burlington's principal lines remain in operation under successor BNSF Railway.

CB&Q No. 3003 is a Class S-4 (4-6-4) "Hudson" type steam locomotive built in 1930 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. If you would like to see the locomotive today, it is preserved on a plinth at a park in Burlington, Iowa. The post card was published by the Audio Visual Designs company in Earlton, New York after 1963 – there is a zip code in their address.