Not "Old Maude", but a Relative!

The locomotive on the front of this post card is one of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s mighty class EM-1 articulated steam locomotives.

It heads up a string of hopper cars as it roars through Corriganville, Maryland on April 29, 1955. It was built by Baldwin in 1944 as one of thirty for service on the Cumberland Division. It was mentioned that this locomotive is an articulated steam locomotive. This website gives some good information about what being articulated means: https://www.american-rails.com/articulated.html An articulated steam locomotive is defined as any design which has at least two sets of drivers, with the lead set having the ability to swivel independently from the rigid frame to more easily negotiate curves. This technological development allowed steam locomotives to grow in size prodigiously. With builders and railroads no longer limited to the size of a locomotive's wheel base, arrangements became longer, larger, heavier, and more powerful. The first use of the articulated steam locomotive in the United States was, as mentioned above, on the B&O in 1904 which collaborated with the American Locomotive Company to create an 0-6-6-0 design listed as Class DD-1 #2400 and given the name "Old Maude." The steamer was manufactured as a true compound, Mallet and for the most part the railroad was pleased with the experimental locomotive. The Mallet design was first introduced by Anatole Mallet (pronounced "Mal-lay") of Switzerland when he constructed an articulated locomotive in France during the 1870s that featured an independent, swiveling front driver that was not mounted rigidly to the rest of the frame.

The post card was published by Audio-Visual Designs in Earlton, New York after 1963. There is a zip code included in their address and zip codes were introduced in 1961.