North Shore Limited

The train pictured on the front of this post card is the “North Shore Limited”,

operated by the New York Central Railroad. It began operations on May 30, 1897 to compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad’s “Pennsylvania Limited”, which started its runs ten years earlier. It ran from New York City to Chicago in 24 hours. It was the New York Central’s first luxury passenger train. The “20th Century Limited” sprang up because of the success of the “North Shore Limited”. The train stopped operating in 1956 as the automobile took over the preferred method of transportation by the population of the United States. Amtrak now uses the name “North Shore Limited” for one of its trains that makes the same connections as its namesake used to make. There have been two derailment crashes of trains at or near the location seen on this post card. Both were due to excessive speed. In 1903, a westbound newspaper train derailed on a sharp curve, probably the one in the picture on this post card, killing the engine crew. In 1940, a much more serious crash at the same location of a fifteen car passenger train killed 31. This part is from Wikipedia: Little Falls was first settled by Europeans around 1723, when German Palatines were granted land under the Burnetsfield Patent. It was then the westernmost European settlement in the colony of New York. The need to portage around the falls promoted a trading location on the site of the future city. It was the first settlement in the town.[4] The settlers were attacked during the French and Indian War, but rebuilt their farms. The small settlement here was destroyed by Iroquois Indians, mostly Mohawk, and Tories in June 1782. The village was not resettled until 1790, and it was known at times as "Rockton" and "Rock City." Little Falls was incorporated as a village in 1811, and reincorporated in 1827. The City of Little Falls was chartered in 1895. The old New York Central Railroad Depot, which stood east of Second Sheet and north of the tracks, was built around 1833 and was torn down in 1899 after the present passenger station was placed in operation.

The post card was published in Mechanicville, New York by Charles W. Hughes, a publisher of lithographic view-cards depicting scenes of upstate New York, Vermont, and western Massachusetts. In 1923 they purchased the negatives of J.S. Wooley and began producing printed postcards from them. Hughes' postcards were printed by C.T. American Art, Chicago. It is from the White Border Era of post cards, so it was published between 1915 and 1930.

The Bridge is Still There, But not the Tracks

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (after many years of building, buying, merging and leasing railroads) had a direct link to the Great Lakes. The city of Elmira, New York must have been included in this expansion to Lake Erie. That is where the picture on the front of this post card was taken.

Sadly, that bridge is no longer used by any railroad. If you go to this website you will see that it is part of a hiking trail today. There is one picture in the file that looks like it was taken from the same spot as the picture on the front of this post card. https://bridgehunter.com/category/city/elmira-new-york/ For the story about the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad go to this website: https://www.american-rails.com/dlw.html That is where I picked up this story, below. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western was another of the Northeast's many anthracite carriers with a history tracing back to the early 19th century. During the company's height it never reached 1,000 miles in size but was nevertheless a well-managed company throughout its corporate history. As a result, it avoided bankruptcy from the time of its formation (early 1850s) until its merger with the Erie more than a century later. The "Road Of Anthracite's" entire network only stretched roughly 950 miles but the Lackawanna was a finely tuned operation with a diverse traffic base and highly skilled railroaders, from top to bottom, that kept it humming along. It weathered the financial panics of 1873 and 1893 and even the Great Depression of 1929. However, its closest brush with bankruptcy did occur during the 1930s, under the leadership of John Davis. It seems that most of the classic railroads of New England and the Northeast can trace their heritage back to an entity predating the industry. Such was the case for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western whose earliest predecessor was the Hoboken Ferry Company. The Lackawanna's two earliest railroad predecessors were the Liggetts Gap Railroad, incorporated on April 7, 1832 and the Delaware & Cobbs Gap Railroad, chartered on December 4, 1850. On April 14, 1851, the company changed its name as the Lackawanna & Western Railroad and later that year, on October 20, 1851, service was opened between both towns. The Lackawanna gained its official name on March 11, 1853 when the L&W merged with the Delaware & Cobbs Gap forming the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. The DL&W at this time ran diagonally across Pennsylvania and enjoyed lucrative sources of freight from iron ore deposits and anthracite coal located within the Lackawanna Valley. With the DL&W's eastern network largely complete it now looked to the west and an extension to Buffalo; reaching this port town along the eastern tip of Lake Erie would mean the railroad no longer needed to rely on its rival, the Erie Railroad, to ferry its freight westward.

The post card was published by a company that was based in Elmira, New York. It was published by the Rubin Brothers. Harry Rubin, and his brother Ike, formerly printers at the Elmira Star Gazette, the first Gannett newspaper, open Rubin’s Newsstand. A wholesale distribution operation, known as Rubin Brothers News, begins in the basement on East Water St. in Elmira, New York. Most wholesale business is newspapers. Few magazines published for distribution at this time. New York Times and other newspapers arrive on trains.

Up and At 'Em!!

It looks like this locomotive is being prepared for the day’s work by three men. There are two in the front and one on the top.

It looks like the one on the top may be adding the chemicals to stabilize the water that will preserve the integrity of the tank. When I looked up this locomotive on the internet I found that it was a uniquely built engine. Here is what I found at this website: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-6-6-2&railroad=cwpc In the Whyte Classification system it is known as a 2-6-6-2T (that makes it a tank engine, that is, it carried its own water supply instead of a tender carrying it). The number of locomotives in this class: 1. This is the only locomotive of its kind! It was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1929. It weighed 222,000 pounds with a water capacity of 2,500 gallons and the boiler pressure was rated for 200 psi. It used 1,200 gallons of oil as the fuel. The driving wheels were 44 inches in diameter. It is a Mallet engine (you can see both cylinders); the high pressure cylinder was 16” in diameter with a 24 inch stroke; the low pressure cylinder was 26” in diameter with a 24 inch stroke. The tractive effort was 34,436 pounds. The post card has a reminder written on the front that it is part of the collection of G. Anderson. When I look up G. Anderson, all I find is a photographer that specialized in things of the Mormon Church. There is nothing that says he spent time in Oregon photographing trains. The locomotive belonged to Crown-Williamette (sic.). This is what I found about the Crown-Willamette Paper Company: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-6-6-2&railroad=cwpc The Crown-Willamette Paper Company was formed in 1914 when the Crown Columbia Paper Company merged with the Willamette Pulp and Paper Company. (By the way, it is pronounced to rhyme with "damn it"; my wife and I have visited there and that is how they taught us how to pronounce Willamette) The Crown Columbia Paper Company was itself the result of a merger in 1905 between the Crown Paper Company of Oregon City and the Columbia River Paper Company of Camas, established by Henry Pittock in 1883 to supply newsprint for his newspaper, the Oregonian. The Crown-Willamette Paper Company had headquarters in San Francisco and Portland and paper plants in a number of cities and towns across Washington, Oregon, and California. These towns included Astoria, Lebanon, West Linn, Oregon City and Seaside in Oregon, Cathlamet and Camas in Washington, and Floristan and Truckee in California. In 1928, the Zellerbach Corporation of San Francisco merged with the Crown-Willamette Paper Company to form the Crown Zellerbach Corporation, which by the 1930s, became the largest paper company on the West Coast and the second largest in the United States. The mill at Camas, Washington was one of Crown Zellerbach's leading producers and became the largest speciality paper mill in the world.

This post card is a "Real Photo" post card. You can see that by looking at the back of the card. It was printed on Kodak Paper and the words "Photo Post Card" are at the top. I figure that this post card had to be made after 1950. The little square where the stamp is to placed gives that away.

Going Home after Coming Home

The locomotive shown here is a 4-8-4 Northern class engine, the “Pride of Pine Bluff”. In fact, it is in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on November 4, 1988 in this picture, prior to a three day round trip to Tyler Texas. This locomotive #819 was built in the shops here in Pine Bluff. It is coming home, so to speak, as it gets ready to go to the home of the Cotton Belt, Tyler, Texas.

Our good friends at Wikipedia tell us this: The St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company (reporting mark SSW), known by its nickname of "The Cotton Belt Route" or simply "Cotton Belt", is a former US Class I railroad which operated between St. Louis, Missouri, and various points in the states of Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas from 1891 to 1980.

In 1980 the Cotton Belt began operating the Rock Island's Golden State Route which added the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico to the operation. It operated as a Southern Pacific subsidiary from 1932 until the operation of the Cotton Belt was assumed by Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1992. What follows here is the history of the beginning and the end of the Cotton Belt Route with a list of all the railroads that have somehow been involved in the building of the railroad in between the beginning and the end. This history is taken from this website: https://arkansasrailroadmuseum.org/about/cotton-belt-route.html#ewpopup/7/ Tyler Tap Railroad This was the first link in the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad (STLSW) Railroad in 1877 near Tyler Texas. The people of Tyler had hopes of being located on the main line of the International & Great Northern Railroad, but as it was surveyed to Longview by the way of Troup, the citizens decided to promote and construct a railroad to tap either the Texas & Pacific or the International. In charge of this scheme was a young army officer, Major James Postell Douglas. Upon returning home to East Texas after the War Between the States, Major Douglas became interested in the fruit industry. Needing a means of rapidly shipping this commodity outside the production area, he petitioned the Twelfth Legislature of Texas in 1870 to pass a special act of incorporation granting to him and others the right to locate, construct, own, operate, and maintain a railroad. It would own a single or double track for a distance not exceeding 40 miles from Tyler to connect with some other railroad, to be selected by the directors. His request was granted on December 1, 1871. This was a narrow-gauge line of 3 feet and operated with one small locomotive. These railroads became part of the Cotton Belt over time: Texas & St. Louis Railway; St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas Railway; Little Rock and Shreveport Branches Short Line Railroads Absorbed by Cotton Belt. Little River Valley & Arkansas Railroad (Purchased 1881); Kansas & Gulf Short Line/Tyler; outheastern Railroads (Purchased 1899); Stuttgart & Arkansas River Railroad (Purchased 1901); Texas & Louisiana Railroad (Purchased 1903); Eastern Texas Railroad (Purchased 1906); Central Arkansas & Eastern Railroad (Leased 1910); Stephenville North & South Texas Railroad (Leased 1910); Paragould Southeastern Railroad (Purchased 1914); Pine Bluff Arkansas River Railroad (Leased 1918); The St. Francis Basin Project (1929-1930); Gideon & North Island Railroad; Deering Southwestern Railroad; Blytheville, Leachville & Arkansas Southern Railroad; Manila & Southwestern Railroad; Cairo, Truman & Southern Railroad; Arkansas Short Line Railroad; St. Louis Southwestern Railway Southern Pacific Takes Control Since 1919 the Cotton Belt had been a very important connection of the Southern Pacific system on traffic between points in the East and the Pacific Coast and points in Texas. The consolidation and strengthening of other systems in the Southwest during the decade, 1920-1930, brought the Southern Pacific to a realization that self preservation required a route to this competitive territory. In July, 1930, the Southern Pacific filed an application with the Interstate Commerce Commission seeking authority to acquire control of the Cotton Belt. The final order of the ICC approved the plan upon conditions which the Southern Pacific accepted in February, 1932. On April 14, 1932, the Southern Pacific Company purchased the stocks which had been in escrow, and on April 19, the same year, it issued sufficient amounts of its own stock to exchange for deposited St. Louis Southwestern stocks in order to complete its control of the Cotton Belt. By May, 1933, the Southern Pacific had 193,134 shares of St. Louis Southwestern preferred and 130,834 shares of St. Louis Southwestern common or 87.37 per cent of the total outstanding shares of Cotton Belt stock.

This is another of my Audio Visual Designs post cards. That is the Cotton Belt logo in the bottom left-hand corner of the post card.