History Passed on from One Person to the Next

The train in the picture on the front of this post card belongs to the Western

Pacific Railroad. The picture was taken in the Feather River Canyon in northern California. Wikipedia provides us the following information: The Feather River Route is a rail line that was built and operated by the Western Pacific Railroad. It was constructed between 1906 and 1909, and connects the cities of Oakland, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The line was built to compete with the Central Pacific Railroad (and later Southern Pacific Railroad), which at the time held a nearly complete monopoly on Northern California rail service. The route derives its name from its crossing of the Sierra Nevada, where it follows both the North and Middle Forks of the Feather River. The route is famous for its impressive engineering qualities and its considerable scenic value. All of the route is now owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The post card is from the J. H. Eastman collection. This website provides pertinent information about the photographer and publisher: https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/archives-and-special-collections/manuscript/eastmans-originals-collection/ Jervie Henry Eastman was born, July 20, 1880, in White Cloud, Michigan.

His family moved to northern California in 1886. In 1898, Eastman launched his photographic career in Sisson, California (later named Mount Shasta), as a view photographer. He became a partner in the Shasta View Company in 1907. Eastman lost his entire stock of plates and cards in a fire in 1912. In 1921, Eastman moved to Susanville and established Eastman & Company as a commercial photography and post card studio. In 1936 he hired Mirl Simmons, a young photographer from Hillsborough, West Virginia, to help with the postcard photography. In 1947, Eastman and Simmons became partners. The business had expanded to provide photographic supplies to southeastern Oregon and studios in Westwood, Weed, and Susanville. Eastman retired from photography in 1959 and sold his share of the business to Simmons. He died in Susanville on February 11, 1969. Simmons ran the Eastman Studios until 1980, when he retired and sold the business to John and Shirley Castle. Mirl Simmons died on April 27, 1987, in Jamestown, California. The Eastman's Originals Collection (the historical postcards and negatives) was sold to Anne Fisher in 1982. She managed the collection until her retirement in 1994. She donated the collection to the University of California, Davis, in 1994.

Oh, to be able to "fly" again!!

The locomotive on the front of this post card is the Denver and Rio Grande

Western No. 169. The information about it here is taken from our good friends at Wikipedia. No. 169 is a 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" type narrow gauge steam railway locomotive and one of twelve similar locomotives built for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1883. It was built as a passenger locomotive, with 46 in (1,200 mm) drivers, the second largest drivers used on any three foot gauge D&RGW locomotive. (The K-37s which were originally standard gauge have 44 in (1,100 mm) drivers.) During its operational life it was used on all of the major D&RGW narrow gauge lines. It appears in two Otto Perry photographs on the branch to Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 1933. It was taken out of service in 1938 and then refurbished in 1939 to appear at the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1941, the railroad donated it to the City of Alamosa and it has been in Cole Park there since. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Locomotive No.169 in 2001.

Judging by the back of the post card, the city of Alamosa is trying to raise enough money to get No. 169 ready to “fly” again. There is no printer or publisher listed on the back of the post card, so I think that the city itself has taken on the responsibility to print this card and sell it to help raise the funds necessary. I wish them the best of luck!!

Watch Out for Tornados

The picture is of a steam engine operated by the Knox & Kane Railroad

crossing the Kinzua Bridge near Mt. Jewell Pennsylvania. The bridge spans the Kinzua Creek Valley, thus its name. The Kinzua Viaduct, when first constructed in May 1882, was the highest and longest viaduct in the world, measuring 301 feet high and 2,053 feet long. The need to transport coal, oil and lumber across the Kinzua Gorge inspired General Thomas Kane, president of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Coal Company and Octave Chanute, Chief Engineer for the Erie Railroad to design a colossal viaduct. It was built by the Elmira Bridge Co. of Elmira, New York. The longest span is only 60 feet, but the entire bridge is 2,053 feet long In 1900, the viaduct was rebuilt of steel to accommodate larger loads and the weight of "modern" train traffic. The style of bridge is a Deck Plate Girder Bridge, which passes the train over Kinzua Creek [today on the former Erie Railway at Kinzua Bridge State Park] in McKean County, Pennsylvania. You can driver there today and walk on the partially re-constructed bridge that was mostly destroyed by a tornado on July 21, 2003. The spans that were left were rehabilitated and reopened in 2011 as the "Kinzua Sky Walk. If you choose to drive there these GPS coordinates can help you to arrive: Approximate latitude, longitude +41.76345, -78.58928 (decimal degrees) 41°45'48" N, 78°35'21" W (degrees)

The post card was printed before the tornado took down the bridge. This is a modern era post card printed by the Modern-Ad Company. It contains a bar-code and a space below for the U. S. Postal Service to print their mark on the bottom. The photo on the front of the post card was taken by Bron Miller.

Quite the Engineering Feat

The Huey P. Long Bridge is a favorite railfan location. It is owned by the

New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, which is owned by the City of New Orleans and managed by the Public Belt Railroad Commission. The information below was taken from the website of the American Society of Civil Engineers: https://www.asce.org/project/huey-p--long-bridge/ "It remains today one of the great bridge engineering accomplishments for railway and highway bridges built in the country." - Historic American Engineering Record, Southeast Regional Office, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2005 By the late 1880s, New Orleans was being served individually by multiple railroad trunk lines. A committee of citizens decided that this wasn't the most efficient and economical way to provide rail service to the port area along the river. They decided that a belt railroad was needed to provide switching among the different trunks. Prior to the construction of the Huey P. Long Bridge, railcars and trucks had to be ferried across the river. With the construction of this bridge, the Port of New Orleans became better connected to the rail infrastructure on both banks. Many conditions, such as the "gumbo soil" in and around the river, low land approaches, strong river currents, and the need for high navigation clearances required for ocean-going vessels, made the design and construction of this bridge difficult. Dr. Karl Terzaghi, who had developed a science of soil mechanics based on investigations of the permeability and compressibility of soil samples, concluded that the caissons of the four main piers should be sealed in a sand layer at a depth of approximately 170 feet and that the fatigue loading should not be more than 5.5 tons per square foot. Prior to Dr. Terzaghi's involvement, it had been recommended that the main piers should be founded from 225 feet to 250 feet below Gulf level. Even when the widening of the bridge was started in 2006, it was determined that no changes to the caisson foundations were needed. Designed by the firm of Modjeski, Masters and Chase, the Huey P Long Bridge was the first bridge to cross the Mississippi River at New Orleans. Its dual-track railroad portion was the longest, highest railroad bridge in the world at the time with a total length of 22,995 feet. The highway portion, 8,076 feet long, consisted originally of two lanes cantilevered off each side. This bridge opened up the southern portion of the country to improved transportation of commerce and people.

The post card was published by Tichnor Brothers Inc. I have 10 post cards from them. It was a long lived company and a major publisher and printer of a wide variety of postcards types from 1912 to 1987 and based at 160 North Washington Street, Boston and Cambridge, MA. Their view-cards were produced on a national level. Their view-cards were produced on a national level. They also produced a black white open halftone series on the hurricane of 1938. Their photochomes went under the trade name Lusterchrome. They also produced an early Tichnor Gloss series that was so heavily retouched they floated somewhere between being artist drawn and being a photograph. The company was sold in 1987 to Paper Majic.

Precourser to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad

The locomotive on the front of this post card is pulling freight near Minneapolis, Minnesota on the Great Northern Railway. The Great Northern Railway was built from several other railroads and has morphed

over the years by being combined with several other railroads. That is why the title of this post says what it says. The information about the Great Northern Railway is taken from this website: https://www.gnrhs.org/gn_history.php The Great Northern Railway was created in September 1889 from several predecessor railroads in Minnesota and eventually stretched from Lake Superior at Duluth and Minneapolis/St. Paul west through North Dakota, Montana and Northern Idaho to Washington State at Everett and Seattle. Headquarters for the line were located in St. Paul, Minnesota. The line was the culmination of one man's dream, James Jerome Hill, the "Empire Builder" so-called because of his ability to create prosperous business where none previously existed. On March 23rd of this year, I wrote about Mr. Hill’s corporate battle with E. H. Harriman and his control over the Oregon territory through the Union and Southern Pacific Railroads. In 1951 the railway’s system was 8,316 miles in length, its trains carry freight, passengers, mail and express in the area between the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean. The railway operates in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California, and in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia. The following four railroads merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad on March 2, 1970: • Great Northern Railway • Northern Pacific Railway • Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad • Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway In 1996 the Burlington Northern Railroad merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

The picture of the train was taken by Bob Fremming out of Dallas, Wisconsin. In the blog post of August 20, 2020 I mention another Fremming that also likes post cards and trains. And, before that, in the November 16, 2011 post I gave reasons why I think these two people are related. This the back of the post card. Bob Fremming's name and location are what form the line between the address and the correspondence. There is a "5-56" At the top-center of the post card's back. I wonder if that means that this was published in May of 1956???