They Share the Rockies; They Share the Appreciation!

There is a train on the left side of the loop at the bottom of this post card. It takes a magnifying glass to see it, but it is there. This loop is part of what helped the Alaska Railroad overcome several obstacles in order to get from Seward to Fairbanks, Alaska in the very early 1900s. Wikipedia tells us that the Alaska Railroad is a Class II railroad that operates freight and passenger trains in the state of Alaska. The railroad's mainline is over 470 miles (760 km) long and runs between Seward on the southern coast and Fairbanks, near the center of the state and the Arctic Circle, passing through Anchorage and Denali National Park. This is the website of the Alaska Railroad, itself: https://www.alaskarailroad.com/corporate/history Here is part of the history one can find there: 1903: Alaska Central Railway (later renamed "The Alaska Railroad") built the first railroad in Alaska. It started in Seward and extended 50 miles north. 1910: Alaska Central Railway reorganized as the Alaska Northern Railway Co., later extending the railroad to Kern Creek - 71 miles from Seward. 1914: The US Congress agrees to fund construction and operation of a railroad from Seward to Fairbanks. Estimated construction cost - $35 million. 1915: Anchorage starts off as a tent town and serves as a railroad construction community along Ship Creek. Railroad headquarters are moved here from Seward. 1923: President Warren G. Harding drives the golden spike in the ground at Nenana, marking the completion of the Alaska Railroad. On his return trip to San Francisco, President Harding died. 1930: With a combined population of just 5,400 people, Seward, Anchorage, and Fairbanks - the only sizable towns along the rail belt - are unable to generate enough business to make the railroad profitable. 1938: Under the management of Col. Otto F. Ohlson, the Alaska Railroad operates its first profitable year. 1940-43: World War II brings large profits from hauling military and civilian supplies and materials. 1943: Two tunnels are built through the Chugach Mountains to allow rail access to Whittier, a military port and fuel depot necessary to support the war effort. A new Anchorage passenger depot is completed in December. 1944: Whittier opens as a second railroad port. Diesel locomotives begin to replace steam engines, a process completed in 1966 when the last steam engine was sold. 1947: The inaugural run of the Aurora, a blue and gold steamliner, marks a new level of passenger service between Anchorage and Fairbanks.

The post card was published by the H.H. Tammen Company out of Denver, Colorado. Both states have a lot of Rocky Mountain train tracks, so I can see why a Denver company could appreciate what an Alaskan railroad was able to accomplish. The H. H. Tammen Company was a novelty dealer and important publisher of national view-cards and Western themes in continuous tone and halftone lithography. Their logo does not appear on all their cards but other graphic elements are often remain the same. H. H. Tammen (1856-1924) Harry Heye Tammen was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 6, 1856, the son of a German immigrant pharmacist. He attended Knapps Academy in Baltimore, then worked in Philadelphia before moving to Denver in 1880. With his partner Charles A. Stuart he worked as a Denver bartender in 1880, and in 1881 they established the firm of H.H. Tammen & Co. (which in 1896 became the H.H. Tammen Curio Co., with partners Carl Litzenberger and Joseph Cox ) in Denver, Colorado. In 1895 Tammen formed a partnership with F.G. Bonfils (whom he had met at the Chicago World's Fair) and they became co-owners and co-editors of the Denver Post. Their publishing business flourished, and Tammen's business successes made him a wealthy man. In 1917 Buffalo Bill Cody happened to die while in Denver, and Tammen (one of the city's biggest boosters) offered Cody's widow $10,000 if she would allow Cody to be buried in Denver; she accepted, and the ensuing funeral procession drew 50,000 people. He established the H.H. Tammen Trust in 1924, providing essential health care for children of families who cannot afford to pay. Tammen died July 19, 1924. The H.H. Tammen Curio Co. was in business until 1953, and possibly as late as 1962.

The World's Fastest... or is it only a copy?

The world's fastest run by a railroad train was made by the Broadway Limited of the Pennsylvania Railroad on Monday, June 12, 1905, when it ran 127.1 miles an hour between AY tower and Elida, Ohio. The Broadway Limited was pulled by coal-burning steam Locomotive 7002, and although many swift runs have been made in recent yers by steam, electric and diesel locomotives, none has equaled the 127.1 mile-an-hour record run established 1905. At the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1949, Locomotive 7002 stands on a section of P.R.R. standard roadbed with rails weighing 155-pounds to the yard - heaviest in the world. Here is an interesting tid-bit about the locomotive on display on this post card. It is taken from this website: https://www.steamonamerica.com/new-blog/3g8bafaezxdez9s-kdrgg-s7c4y-65fh3-6ggef-blzx6-ymc4m-jjdzx-58l4h-7m7hc-hf876-zhhx4-grnd2-4afhz-bpx24-aba86-erpnb-77hj9 7002’s original number was 8063 and was built in 1902 in Altoona and the original one was built also in 1902 in Altoona. On June 11th, 1905, 7002 made an historic run. It hauled the Pennsylvania Special as a replacement locomotive in Crestline, Ohio to Chicago. The train started in New York City. It went up to 127.1 miles per hour. The Pennsylvania Special would be renamed The Broadway Limited in 1912. In 1935 it was sadly scraped. 8063 was renumbered to 7002 so that it could be placed on display at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948 and 1949. While on display, it was hailed as “The World’s Fastest Steam Engine”. It came to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in December of 1979 and was placed on display until 1982 when it was chosen to be restored as a stand in for Canadian National 89 which needed to be restored at the time. 7002 was used mostly on the half-hour trains. It doubleheaded with 1223 on several different occasions. Like 1223 in 1989, 7002 was tested but the firebox was to thin for safe operations. The last time it ran was on December 20, 1989 and it hasn’t been operating since then. I have absolutely no information about who published the post card, although I would suspect it was either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Chicago Railroad Fair that did so.

It was a beautiful ride.

Before I went to the East Coast to go to college from the Los Angeles area, my Dad and I took a trip to Northern Arizona, where I grew up. As part of that trip we took a scenic train ride through the White Mountains area. It was a side gig for the Apache Railway Company. Their main line of income was logging trains.

The train on the front of this post card is the train that my Dad and I took back in the early 1970s. This website will tell you more of the history of the Apache Railway: https://www.american-rails.com/apache.html The common-carrier Apache Railway was originally built to handle logs and paper products, owned by the Apache Logging Company. The history of the Apache Railway begins on September 5, 1917 when construction commenced from a connection with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway at Holbrook building southward to tap timber reserves for a paper mill. A year later, almost exactly to the day on September 6, 1918 the railroad completed its line as far south as Snowflake and two years after that in the summer of 1920 the route was opened to McNary, a total of 72 main line miles. The railroad would reach a peak size of 140 miles, which included several branches and spurs. In 1924 the railroad was acquired by the Cady Logging Corporation. From October 1, 1931, until 1936, amid the Great Depression, the APA was placed in receivership. In 1935 it again changed ownership to Southwest Lumber Mills. Finally, in 1960 the railroad was purchased by Southwest Forest Industries. The Apache owned steam locomotives but was well-known during its diesel years for operating venerable American Locomotive Company products. A tourist railroad, the White Mountain Scenic Railroad, operated steam powered passenger excursions over the Southwest Forest Industries-owned line from McNary to the logging camp of Maverick, AZ, beginning in 1964. As track conditions deteriorated, the excursions were cut back in later years to a point about half of the way to Maverick. In the final years, it operated north from Pinetop Lakes to a place called Bell Siding on U.S. Route 60. In 1976, the White Mountain Scenic Railroad ceased operations and moved its equipment to Heber City, Utah to be used on an excursion there known as the "Heber Creeper." In 1984 it abandoned its line south of Snowflake, reducing its property to 33 miles. The railroad was hit hard by the 2012 closure of its largest customer, the paper mill in Snowflake.

The post card was published by Norm's Publishing House. The company's address was 610 McLellan in Mesa, Arizona. The interesting thing about the company listing on this post card is the phone number. "... for a train ride on the steam powered WHITE MOUNTAIN SCENIC RAILROAD, Phone 245 or write Box 496, McNary, Arizona. The phone number only has three digits. This post card is a photochrome sytle of card. They first came out in 1939. The address of the railroad does not have a zip code; those came out in 1963. Given these facts, I would guess that this card is from the late 1950s or the very early 1960s.

From Brand New to Run Down to Brand re-New

The train pictured on the front of this post card is leaving the new Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. This website gives the history of the station from the railroad perspective: https://www.american-rails.com/kcus.html Kansas City, which laid some 250 miles away from St. Louis, across the state of Missouri, was situated at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. It was originally established on June 1, 1850 as the town of Kansas during efforts to settle the West and later renamed Kansas City. Following the Civil War the United States government expedited this process by funding the Transcontinental Railroad to push economic growth far beyond the Mississippi River. One federally chartered line, which eventually became the Kansas Pacific Railway, was the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western of 1855. The railroad began construction from Kansas City in 1863 and extended to Lawrence by 1864. In August of 1870 the road reached Denver and was acquired by Union Pacific in 1874. From the east the first line to reach Kansas City was the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, which opened a branch there on July 3, 1869. In the succeeding years more and more railroads reached KC, which established itself as the dominant center of trade in the region and became somewhat similar to St. Louis in this regard. With a growing city it was clear a centralized rail terminal was needed and Union Depot opened on April 8, 1878 between Union Avenue and present-day West Bottoms near the riverfront. It was designed partially in the Gothic Revival style by lead architect Asa Beebe Cross. While a beautiful structure with a central clock tower, arched windows, and dormers of various size, alas, after just two decades of service it proved inadequate and was prone to flooding (there also lacked enough room for needed expansion). And so, as early as 1903 plans were drawn up for a new terminal. As railroads and the city worked out the details the former established the jointly-owned Kansas City Terminal Railway for the purpose of operating the new facility. There were a dozen railroads involved in the project including: St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco), Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (Santa Fe), Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (Burlington Route), Milwaukee Road, Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific (Rock Island), Union Pacific, Chicago Great Western, Alton Railroad (later owned by the Baltimore & Ohio and then sold to Gulf, Mobile & Ohio), Kansas City Southern, Missouri Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy)and the Wabash. The city sought a terminal that rivaled those in New York and hired architect Jarvis Hunt to design a magnificent facility. Hunt was already known for his work having conceived recently-built 16th Street Station in Oakland and Joliet Union Station in Illinois. All three were dressed in the Beaux-Arts style. Kansas City Union Station employed wide open spaces and ornate decorations on the walls and ceilings including a magnificent clock in the Grand Hall and three huge chandeliers. It took several years but finally opened on October 30, 1914 after eight years of construction, then the second largest in the country. The facility was also designed to handle the city's streetcar and interurban traffic. Despite being opened during the heyday of rail travel the terminal's peak passenger traffic did not occur until 1945 when it witnessed nearly 680,000 travelers pass through its doors! This website gives the history from today’s perspective. http://news.visitkc.com/facts/union-station#:~:text=HISTORY%3A%20Design%20for%20Union%20Station%20began%20in%201906.,the%20Station%20just%20after%20midnight%20on%20Nov.%201. Design for Union Station began in 1906. By the time the Station opened to the public in 1914, the construction cost had topped $6 million. Its first arrival, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Flyer, pulled into the pulled into the Station just after midnight on Nov. 1. Railway use peaked during World War I, with Union Station witnessing the arrivals and departures of more than 79,000 trains. Passenger traffic began to decline during the '50s and '60s as the airline industry gained momentum. In 1985, Amtrak discontinued its Union Station service. Passed by voters in 1996, a bi-state cultural sales tax—the first of its kind in the country—funded nearly half of the Station’s $250 million renovation. The remaining money was raised through private donations and federal funding. The fully-restored Station reopened to the public in 1999 with new shops, restaurants, theaters and a science center. Amtrak returned to Union Station in December 2002, offering several daily departures. The organization that operates Union Station is a non-profit organization, Union Station is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

The post card was published by Max Bernstein from Kansas City, Missouri. He was a publisher of lithographic postcards from the divided back era to the linens. Most of these cards depicted views and events of the American mid-West though other types of cards were produced as well such as Judaica. Many of Bernstein’s cards were printed by Curt Teich. His company was around from 1916 (two years after this Union Station opened) to 1932.