The Northern Pacific Railway through the Years

The locomotive in the picture on the front of the top post card is that of the very first locomotive of the Northern Pacific Railway. It is the “famous” Minnetonka. It was built in 1870 and used in construction work in Minnesota in 1870 and 1871. It was then shipped to San Francisco by rail and by steamer to the Columbia River for construction service on the west end of the Northern Pacific’s rail line from Kalama to Tacoma, Washington. It weighed 12 tons and cost $6,700 (about $150,000 in today’s dollars).

The front of the middle post card contains a picture of Northern Pacific’s Locomotive Number 13. It was a 4-4-0 “American”-type locomotive. It was built by Schenectady Locomotive Works (long before it was merged into the American Locomotive Company [Alco] in 1901). Four of them (numbers 13 through 16) were built for the Northern Pacific Railway. All four locomotives were still operating in 1935, but soon after they were all scrapped. These two post cards were published by Bob Fremming out of Dallas, Wisconsin. My guess is that they were published in March of 1957 – there is a code in the top-middle of the post card that says, “3-57”.

This third post card has a much more modern steam locomotive picture. It is a 4-8-4 Northern-type of locomotive. It was built by Baldwin in 1943. It was not the first Northern-type locomotive built for the Northern Pacific Railway. That was done by Alco in 1926. You can easily see that this is a coal-burning steam locomotive; just look at that load of coal in the tender!! The picture was part of the Carl H. Sturner Collection. Carl Sturner was the founder of Audio-Visual Designs for the sole purpose of sharing train related audio-visual materials to rail fans. The company is still operating today, but without Mr. Sturner, who died in 1995. This post card was published by Audio-Visual Designs after 1983 – there is a five digit zip code with the 4-digit extension in the address.