To Russia with Love, NOT!

The picture on the front of this post card was taken on August 25, 1956. They are locomotives working for Eagle Picher. In 1927, the Eagle-Picher Lead Company was one of the largest white lead and zinc companies in the United States. Its assets exceeded $45,000,000, with ore refineries in Kansas and Oklahoma as well as Missouri. However, the locomotives in the picture are much older than the 1956 picture. These are ex-Frisco

locomotives and were some of the last true Russian Decapods in existence at that time. Here is the history on each of the locomotives as taken from this website: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,4762780 This website (in orange, below) has a book about the Russian Decapods. I have taken some information from the first page. If you are interested, I am sure it will make for some fascinating reading. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43518384 In the early 1900s Russia ordered a huge fleet of 2-10-0 type locomotives known as Decapods. A. I. Lipetz, the chief of the locomotive division of the Russian Mission on Ways of Communication, managed the design and construction in the US. They were originally built for the 5-foot gauge Russian State Railways to haul 1300 metric tons at a speed of 8 to 10 miles per hour over grades of .8%. The Bolshevik revolution forced cancellation of undelivered locomotives, so the builders sold them to American railroad companies. Eventually, the locomotives served on at least 42 different railroads, mostly in the east and south. These locomotives were considered by some to be the ugliest locomotives ever built. They had low drivers, very high boilers and enormous steam domes. Some American railroads made cosmetic adjustments to change the appearance of their Decapods.

The post card was published by Bob Fremming of Dallas, Wisconsin. The picture was taken by Richard Wallin of Kirkwood Missouri. I searched the internet over and over and found no information about either of these people.