Is this Locomotive a Fake?

The train pictured on this post card is called “The Limited Express”. This really does not tell us much of anything about the train itself. The definition of a “limited express” is that it has fewer station stops than a regular passenger train. The locomotive in the picture may be a made-up locomotive. The number on the front stands out too well to be a normal number plate on a steam locomotive. It isn’t a Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive because their numbers were on a keystone plate. For the New York Central Railroad Number 231 was a yard switcher. I looked up several other railroads that served Chicago, but I could not find a Number 231 that matched the one in this picture.

This post card does not have an obvious date for its origin. However, the front has the same look as a post card printed before March 1, 1907. Before then, you could not write a message on the back of the post card – only an address. The kind printers would leave a bit of white space on the front of the card (it also saved them ink costs) for you to write your short message. The back of the post card says that it was printed between 1907 and 1915. This is known as the Divided Back Era of post cards. The sender could write a message on the left and add the address to the right-hand side of the back of the card. That is what we are seeing here, on this post card. It was published by the V. O. Hammon Publishing Company out of Chicago, Illinois (this post card was published out of the Chicago office) and Minneapolis, Minnesota. They existed from 1900 to 1923. They were a major publisher of halftone lithographic view-cards of the Great Lakes region. They also published novelty cards. Most of their cards tend to have a distinct look as they were printed in crisp RGB colors with small red block lettering. The V.O. Hammon Publishing Company, publisher of pictorial postcards, is listed in the Minneapolis, Minnesota city directory from 1904 until 1923.