Chicago to New York in Style

The locomotive in the picture on the front of this post card is Nickel Plate Number 172. It is pulling train Number 8 from Chicago to New York. It is

departing Chicago here on October 14, 1955. The following information was taken from these two websites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_Plate_Road and https://www.american-rails.com/nickel.html Its 2,200-mile network linked Buffalo with Chicago and St. Louis within the hotly contested Midwestern market while the late-era addition of the Wheeling & Lake Erie provided significant coal and steel traffic. It was built to impeccably high standards with a physical plant capable of high-speed service that shined in the post-World War II era. As a result, all three trunk lines (Pennsylvania, New York Central, and Baltimore & Ohio) occasionally shifted their own trains (including flagship services) onto the Nickel Plate. It did so well, in fact, that according to John Rehor's excellent book, "The Nickel Plate Story," the company grossed $2.8 billion between 1945 and the 1964 merger with Norfolk & Western while enjoying profits of $250 million. Today, many of the Nickel Plate's primary corridors remain in use under successor Norfolk Southern. The Nickel Plate Limited was a passenger night train operated by the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate) between Chicago and Buffalo, New York via Cleveland, Ohio, with through service to Hoboken, New Jersey (for New York City) via Binghamton and Scranton and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad for the Buffalo-Hoboken segment. In 1954 the Nickel Plate renamed the train: the westbound train became the City of Chicago while the eastbound train became the City of Cleveland. Service to Hoboken ended in 1959. Both trains survived the Nickel Plate itself: service ended on September 10, 1965, a year after the Nickel Plate's 1964 merger with the Norfolk and Western Railway. They were the final remnants of the Nickel Plate's passenger service.

This post card was published by Audio-Visual Designs our of Earlton, New York. It was published between 1955 and 1963. I know this because the picture was taken in 1955 and the address of Audio-Vidual Designs does not include a zip code. Zip codes were introduced in the United States in 1963.