The Underdog Wins this One!!

The locomotive on the front of this post card is a Mikado. The Whyte notation of steam locomotives would make it a 2-8-2. That means two wheels out front to help it get around corners, eight driving wheels and two wheels in the back to support the cab and firebox. This website gives us a short history of the Mikado Locomotive: https://railwaywondersoftheworld.com/mikado-locomotive.html "JAPAN was responsible for fostering the creation of one distinctive member of the family of locomotives. Increasing goods traffic in the island kingdom called for more power, and the “Consolidation”, despite its perfection, could not satisfactorily meet the situation. The fuel forthcoming was a most inferior quality of coal, with the result that the effective combustion necessitated a large grate area combined with a fire-box of pronounced depth and volume. The construction of the new series of locomotives was entrusted to the Baldwin Locomotive Works, whose technicians, in the resolve to satisfy the Japanese requirements, took the established “Consolidation” and gave it a wide, deep fire-box set behind the driving wheels. To provide the necessary support for the fire-box a trailing truck was introduced, giving the wheel arrangement 2-8-2. For purposes of distinction the new type was standardized as the “Mikado”, out of compliment to the Japanese Imperial Railways upon which it made its debut." The locomotive on the front belonged to the Grand Trunk Western Railway. Its story is told below as found at this website: https://www.american-rails.com/gtw.html Grand Trunk Western's immediate heritage begins when the Chicago, Detroit & Canada Grand Trunk Junction Railroad was formed on March 16, 1858 to connect Detroit with Port Huron, a distance of 60 miles. It opened a little over a year later, on November 21, 1859. It was soon leased by Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for the purpose of forming a Detroit-Chicago corridor. Grand Trunk Railway interests quickly realized that reaching Chicago would require a monumental battle with the Vanderbilts who sought to restrict competition across Michigan. The Vanderbilts were ruthless in their aim to spread New York Central's influence throughout the Northeast and Midwest. In a surprising turn of events the Vanderbilt of the day was ultimately outfoxed in attempting to block its entry. To do this he acquired the small Chicago & North Eastern (C&NE), believing this road of just 49 miles (opened in 1877) connecting Flint and Lansing was a key asset. His intuition proved correct but the Canadians countered by slyly picking up a series of disconnected railroads surrounding the C&NE. These included the Port Huron & Lake Michigan in 1879 (running between Port Huron with Flint it first opened in 1871 and totaled 66 miles); Peninsular Railroad of Michigan (opened between 1869 and 1872, at 115 miles in length it connected Lansing with South Bend, Indiana); and the Peninsular Railroad Company of Indiana (extending west from South Bend it opened 45 miles to Valparaiso by 1873). Cut off from friendly connections and with nowhere else to turn Vanderbilt capitulated and sold out to the Canadians. Service opened to Chicago via the Chicago & State Line Extension's completion on February 8th running 47 miles from Valparaiso to Chicago. At its zenith the Grand Trunk Railway was an impressive operation, maintaining its own 800-mile corridor from Portland, Maine to Sarnia while also linking Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto. In addition, it controlled the Central Vermont Railway.

The post card was published by www.railcards.com at PO Box 3081 in Alameda, California. Unfortunately, those addresses not longer valid. I looked on line for the website and found nothing. The sad part is that I have 204 post cards from this publisher and I know nothing about them.

What the Heck is MOBRIDGE?

The bridge in this post card picture no longer exists. But before I tell you why, let me give you a bit of history. The bridge was built by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. The following history was taken from this website: https://southdakota.com/cities/mobridge-sd/ In the late 1800’s white settlers began to move onto the land that is presently Mobridge, standing on land that was once owned by General S.E. Olson. A thought came to him when he was goose hunting in 1885 that this was the place the Milwaukee Railroad would cross the Missouri River. He remarked to his friends this would be a grand crossing for the Milwaukee. The phrase grand crossing stuck and a corporation was formed named Grand Crossing and Improvement Company. A telegrapher’s dots and dashes gave Mobridge its name when the town formed, as railroad crews were building the railroad bridge across the Missouri River. He ended his telegraph transmissions with M.O.Bridge. The Milwaukee Railroad reached Mobridge on September 9, 1906, and the first lot was sold on October 3, 1906. The bridge was demolished by the Corps of Engineers in the early 1960s and replaced by a higher bridge due to the construction of the Oahe Dam. From this website I picked up the following tidbit of information "MO.Bridge" Historical Marker (hmdb.org) There is a historical marker at the site of the old bridge. It reads, “In 1906, one hundred years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition passed through this area, Milwaukee Railroad crews labored to build a bridge across the Missouri River. They carefully worked, balancing themselves on high metal beams as the sound of hammers resonated across the water. Once completed in 1905, trains filled with homesteaders could now venture to the last of the open range. This bridge, though no longer standing, was an icon for western movement and the town's namesake. An unknown telegraph operator sent word of the bridge's location as succinctly as possible, and with his abbreviated dots and dashes, he intended to convey "Missouri Bridge," and consequently gave MO.Bridge (Mobridge, South Dakota) its name.

The post card was printed and published by the same company as last week's post card: The Detroit Publishing Company. This one, too, is a PHOSTINT CARD.

A Kentucky Train at the Gulf Coast

The L & N in the caption of this post card picture (lower left corner) stands

for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Below is a bit of history about how a Kentucky and Tennessee based railroad came to be on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The history is taken from this website. http://www.lnrr.org/History.aspx It was written by Charles B. Castner. I have truncated the story. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad was born March 5, 1850, when it was granted a charter by the Commonwealth of Kentucky “...to build a railroad between Louisville, Kentucky, and the Tennessee state line in the direction of Nashville." On December 4, 1851, an act of the Tennessee General Assembly authorized the company to extend its road from the Tennessee state line to Nashville. Laying of track began at Ninth Street and Broadway in Louisville in May of 1853. By 1855, the founding fathers of the L&N, most of them Louisville citizens, had raised nearly $3 million to finance the construction. The first train to operate over the railroad ran on August 25, 1855, when some 300 people traveled eight miles from Louisville at a speed of 15 mph! A little more than four years later, on October 27, 1859, the first train operated all the way from Louisville to Nashville, joining the two namesake cities. For all practical purposes, the 187-mile railroad was complete. Scheduled trains began running a few days later. The total cost of this original construction was $7 million. By the time the Civil War began in 1861, the L&N had 269 miles of track. Located almost in the middle of the opposing armies, the L&N at various times served both the Union and the Confederacy as the tides of war changed. Although the railroad suffered considerable damage during the war years, it emerged in surprisingly good financial condition. It was so well off, in fact, that at the close of the war the L&N began expanding. Within a period of 30 years, through construction and acquisition of existing short railroads, the L&N extended its tracks to St. Louis in Missouri, Cincinnati in Ohio, Birmingham and Mobile in Alabama, Pensacola in Florida,and New Orleans in Louisiana.

The railroad's entrance into the Gulf of Mexico ports came in 1881. A 140-mile rail line, including roughly nine miles of trestles and bridges, linked Mobile with New Orleans, but there was little contact with the outside world until the L&N extended its tracks to Mobile and then acquired the line on into New Orleans. This acquisition enabled the railroad to extend its sphere of influence to international markets for agricultural products and goods manufactured in major cities along the L&N. The postwar years brought swift, striking changes to railroading, as the L&N, which purchased its first diesel in 1939, retired its last steam locomotive in 1957. The L&N introduced streamlined passenger service with the advent of The Humming Bird and The Georgian, and gradually updated the equipment on such passenger trains as The Pan- American, The Piedmont Limited, The Crescent, The Azalean, The Dixie Flyer, The Flamingo and The Southland. During that year, however, the Seaboard Coastline Railroad, which had owned 35percent of the L&N's stock for many years, bought the remainder of the outstanding shares, and the L&N became the wholly-owned subsidiary of Seaboard Coast Line Industries. On December 31, 1982, the corporate entity known as the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company was officially merged into the Seaboard System Railroad, ending the L&N's 132-year existence under a single name. The Seaboard System quickly lost its own corporate identity as it and the Chessie System became CSX Transportation in 1986.

The post card was printed and published by the Detroit Photographic Company. It was started in 1898 in Detroit, Michigan. In 1907 they company started calling their post card printing process the “PHOSTINT CARD”. This card is one of the PHOSTINT CARDS. It was known, until 1905, as the Detroit Photographic Company, and then did business as the Detroit Publishing Company through 1924 when it was declared to be bankrupt.

Elegant, Mission-style Depot no longer there.

The station that replaced the train station on the front of the post card is described quite nicely on this website: https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm58PY_Great_Northern_Railway_Depot_Everett_Washington

The station was in operation serving passengers until the opening of the Everett Intermodal Station. It is still used by the BNSF Railway for office space but is no longer used for passenger service. The station is notable for the pocket park, maintained by volunteers with the cooperation of the BNSF Railway; see the link below. The depot is located at 2900 Bond St., Everett, WA. This does not appear to be the same building that was there in 1910. That building was a 'mission' style station with a low tower in the center as you can see on the post card. I have already blogged about the Great Northern Railway and James Hill in the past; I published it on November 2, 2022. However, I will add the following to the previous entry. It comes from this website: https://www.american-rails.com/great.html What became the Great Northern Railway (GN) was the work of a singe individual, James Jerome Hill. The legendary "Empire Builder" pieced together one of America's great transportation companies over the span of nearly four decades. It all began with the small St. Paul & Pacific and, by the time of his passing in 1917, the GN was a transcontinental carrier of more than 8,000 miles. Hill was a methodical, driven, and excellent railroader who was so good at his profession he sometimes worked as a consultant for others. The tycoon always planned his next move well in advance and was rarely caught off-guard. As a result, the superb management Hill instilled at Great Northern continued throughout its corporate existence.

The post card was published by Edward H. Mitchell. He was born April 27, 1867 in San Francisco - died from a heart attack in Palo Alto, California on October 24, 1932. Most of his postcards are about the West, he was very prolific, and his cards have great color for the time they were created. There are postcards being republished with other publishing companies that Mitchell owned or was a partner in, Pacific Novelty Co. and Souvenir Publishing Co. Mitchell rode the rails, which makes sense in his era. I am sure that he created many postcards about the railroads in exchange for discounted travel. I believe that is where the saying “The road of a thousand Wonders” which appears on many cards came from. Mitchell also was willing to have artists paint hats on people, he loved hats, and add other eye candy to sell postcards. At one point he was even putting sparkle on cards. All postcards printed after 1908 proudly proclaim 'Printed in the United States' on their backside. Edward H. Mitchell gave up postcard publishing around 1923.