Ten Wheels. Count Them. Ten Wheels

The picture on the front of this post card shows a steam locomotive with ten wheels; there are four on the pilot and six driving wheels. The Whyte Classification of steam locomotives categorizes locomotives by the wheel arrangements and gives them a "nick name". For example, a 2-6-2 wheel arrangement is also called a "Prairie" locomotive; or, the 4-10-0 is called a "Mastodon".

The locomotive in this picture is a 4-6-0 or a "Ten Wheeler". Not very imaginative. This website (a treasure trove of knowledge) tells us the following about Ten Wheelers. https://www.american-rails.com/wheeler.html Like the Consolidation, the 4-6-0 "Ten-wheeler" was another steam locomotive design that helped to displace the common American. The Ten-wheeler is perhaps the only design to derive its name simply from the number of wheels it carries (ten) with a 4-6-0 arrangement. The 4-6-0 was developed as early as the late 1840s first appearing on the Philadelphia & Reading. Their creation came about because of a need to increase adhesion, which allowed a single locomotive to haul heavier loads. Essentially an American design, the Ten-wheeler’s extra axle allowed for this increase in tractive effort. For the first times in the railroad industry’s short history it now had a specialized locomotive that could be used for specific purposes, in this case hauling freight and passengers over steep grades. As trains became heavier the 4-6-0 ran into the same problem of all models which lacked a trailing axle or truck; without the added support for a larger firebox and a small frame of just three driving axles limiting boiler size the locomotive, eventually, could simply not keep up with the times. The locomotive on the front of this post card belonged to the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad. On January 4th of this year I published this about the Rock Island Line. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chicago-Rock-Island-and-Pacific-Railroad-Company tells us that... The Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad Company, its official name, was also known as the Rock Island Railroad, or The Rock. It was a U.S. railroad company founded on February 27, 1847 as the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company to build a line from Rock Island to La Salle, Illinois. Construction began in earnest on October 1, 1851 after the first $300,000 was raised. The first train ran on the tracks on October 10, 1852 between Chicago and Joliet, Illinois. Construction continued on through La Salle, and Rock Island was reached on February 22, 1854. This made it the first railroad to connect Chicago with the Mississippi River. By 1866 its lines extended from Chicago, Illinois to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Management in the late 19th century was extremely conservative, but new interests took over in 1901. By 1907 the line attained its peak length of 14,270 miles (22,975 kilometres) in 13 states, but this rapid expansion impaired its credit and it was reorganized in 1917 and again in 1947. In the 1960s the Rock Island again began to decline. Merger discussions with other railroads failed, and it began bankruptcy proceedings in March 1975. Federal loan guarantees kept it running, but in January 1980 a federal judge ordered the railroad liquidated on the grounds that there was no way of reorganizing it for profitable operation. Its properties were sold off piecemeal in the early 1980s.

The post card was published by Bob Fremming out of Dallas, Wisconsin. This is the fifth post card I am posting that he published. I still cannot find much information about him on line, but he was a prolific publisher. There are samples of his cards on line at Etsy, Ebay, and other auction sites.