Camels on the Railroad?

The National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri has one of a very few samples of what the railroad industry called "Camelbacks". The "Camelback" pictured on the front of this post card was built in 1873 at the Mt. Clare shops. It is a 4-6-0 "Davis Ten-Wheeler", which is a later edition of the famous Winans "Camelback" design. It was operated by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad as Number 173. This locomotive was retired in 1900 to become part of the Purdue University Collection. This website (https://www.american-rails.com/mikado.html) has wonderful details about railroad history, so I have taken the following information from it: By Adam Burns - - - Camelbacks, while not necessarily the safest such design ever conceived were certainly one of the most unique. The Camelback is not a named wheel arrangement like the 4-6-2 Pacific or 2-8-4 Berkshire but a term only meant to describe a distinctive design feature found on some steam locomotives. While Camelbacks were banned citing safety concerns in the early 20th century they proved quite successful to the anthracite carriers, who could use them to burn a cheap and plentiful anthracite coal waste known as culm. The Camelback received its name for the unique positioning of the locomotive cab which sat astride the boiler giving the design a center "humped" appearance. While the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad developed something similar to the later Camelback in the 1840s, given the interesting name of "Muddiggers," it was not until John Wootten (who worked for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, a Reading Railroad predecessor) patented his Wootten firebox and boiler design in 1877 did the design really catch on. This particular designed allowed for the burning of the fuel the locomotive used by providing a very wide, large firebox that produced robust fires yet only utilized a consumed a small amount at a time with a low firing rate. Because the locomotive was developed to burn the very abundant anthracite coal waste, culm, Camelbacks became fantastically popular with the railroads which staked their livelihoods on the resource. While Wootten's design allowed railroads, particularly the anthracite carriers, to gain huge savings on fuel costs it also came at an increased safety risk. Because the firebox on Camelbacks was so large, as to gain the necessary and needed fire temperatures, it forced the cab to be placed astride the boiler and over the driving wheels (so the engineer could gain proper clearance). This not only made for an extremely uncomfortable and hot ride during warmer months for engineers it also made them more at risk to injury if any part of the driving wheel assembly failed while at speed. To make matters worse the fireman was left exposed to the elements back by the firebox, where of course he had to remain to feed fuel to the locomotive. Due to these safety issues the Interstate Commerce Commission began to seriously look at the hazards Camelback steam locomotives exposed to train crews and by 1927 the agency had completely banned new or rebuilt locomotives which featured the Camelback design. In total, nearly 3,000 Camelback steam locomotives were either rebuilt from conventional designs, custom-built by individual railroads, or purchased from manufacturers.

The post card was published by CharmCraft, also out of St. Louis, Missouri. The printing was done by Colourpicture Publishers in Boston Massachussets between 1943 and 1963. Postal Zones were introduced in 1943 and the Zip Code was introduced in 1963. This address has a postal zone.