Isn't that a Train, not an Airplane?

Yes. It is a train, not an airplane. The name of the railroad is a marking tool to demonstrate how fast their locomotives were expected to travel. The

picture on the front of this post card is of the Seaboard Air Line #2028 power car. It was built in 1936 by the St. Louis Car Company and it was used to pull two or three other cars from branch lines to the main connection points with Seaboard Air Line’s main line. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us this: “The Seaboard Air Line Railroad (reporting mark SAL), which styled itself as "The Route of Courteous Service", was an American railroad that existed from April 14, 1900, until July 1, 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. Predecessor railroads dated from the 1830s and reorganized extensively to rebuild after the American Civil War. The company was headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, until 1958, when its main offices were relocated to Richmond, Virginia… At the end of 1925 SAL operated 3,929 miles of road, not including its flock of subsidiaries; at the end of 1960 it reported 4,135 miles. The main line ran from Richmond via Raleigh, North Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida, a major interchange point for passenger trains bringing travelers to the Sunshine State. From Jacksonville, Seaboard rails continued to Tampa, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach and Miami… The complex corporate history of the Seaboard began on March 8, 1832, when its earliest predecessor, the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad was chartered by the legislatures of Virginia and North Carolina to build a railroad from Portsmouth, Virginia, to the Roanoke River port of Weldon, North Carolina. After a couple of months of horse-drawn operation, the first locomotive-pulled service on this line began on September 4, 1834, with a twice-daily train from Portsmouth to Suffolk, Virginia, 17 miles away." This complex history can be better followed by going to this website: https://www.american-rails.com/seaboard.html

Once again the mystery publisher strikes!!!

Hiawatha had Class, and much Glass!!

The photo on the front of this post card is a Beaver Tail observation car used on the Hiawatha routes.

From our friends at Wikipedia: “The Hiawathas were a fleet of named passenger trains operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (also known as the Milwaukee Road) between Chicago and various destinations in the Midwest and Western United States. The most notable of these trains was the original Twin Cities Hiawatha, which served the Twin Cities in Minnesota. The train was named for the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. History The first Hiawatha trains ran in 1935. By 1948, five routes carried the Hiawatha name: The Twin Cities Hiawatha — the main line route from Chicago through Milwaukee to St. Paul and Minneapolis, in Morning and Afternoon editions. The Twin Cities Hiawatha was the original Hiawatha, beginning service between Chicago and the Twin Cities on May 29, 1935. The Hiawatha used styled streamlined Class A 4-4-2 steam locomotives built by the American Locomotive Company and was intended to compete directly with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad's (Burlington Route) Twin Cities Zephyrs and Chicago and North Western Railway's Twin Cities 400. The North Woods Hiawatha — a spur route off the Chicago-Minnesota main line leading from New Lisbon to Minocqua, Wisconsin The Chippewa-Hiawatha — connected Chicago to Ontonagon in Michigan's Upper Peninsula via Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wisconsin The Midwest Hiawatha — used the Milwaukee Road's mainline across Illinois and Iowa to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Omaha, Nebraska (the train split into two parts in Manilla, Iowa) The Olympian Hiawatha — which traversed the Milwaukee mainline from Chicago-Twin Cities-Seattle/Tacoma.” Adam Burns of https://www.american-rails.com/ says that the history of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad’s Hiawatha is multifaceted and long. If you are interested in getting the details, you may want to purchase (or check out of the library) one of these two books: Jim Scribbins' book, "The Hiawatha Story," and "The Milwaukee Road's Hiawathas" by Brian Solomon and John Gruber.

This post card was published by that great post card mystery publisher Railcards.com

Doodlebug???

The information below was taken from this website: https://www.american-rails.com/defect.html By Adam Burns The history of testing for internal track defects dates back to the early 1900s and sadly it all began with a serious accident that occurred on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The incident occurred in 1911 when a passenger train derailed and crashed near Manchester, New York due to what is now known as a transverse fissure, or a crack/defect within a rail that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Four years later in 1915 the Bureau of Standards initiated research into finding a way to test and find this deadly problem, no longer was simply walking the rails to find potential issues effective. It took over a decade for a testing method to be developed and implemented. In 1923 a Dr. Elmer Sperry, who also created the gyroscope among his more than 400 patents he would lay claim to, began development on an induction system that would test for these transverse fissures. Defect detection cars have been scanning the rails for undetectable defects and cracks dating all of the way back to the mid-1920s with the birth of Sperry Rail Service.

Today, the company's equipment is a common sight across America with their signature yellow heavy utility trucks (the classic Doodlebug rail cars have largely since been retired). The original cars used a system known as induction testing to detect defects and newer methods use ultrasonic testing. The classic, retrofitted doodlebugs which Sperry became so well known for over the years have predominantly been replaced by high-tech utility trucks and new rail cars. By 1928 he had perfected the invention and launched his company, Sperry Rail Service. While many of the large Class I railroads operate a few of their such cars, even today, for more than 80 years since its inception Sperry has often been the contractor of choice by railroads to search and scan for transverse fissures and other imperfections hiding within their rails. The induction method uses electrical brushes and low voltage power to create a magnetic field around the rail and the different variations in the field can mean that a unseen defect or crack is apparent within the steel. Later, in the 1950s Sperry developed a new method for finding cracks and imperfections within rails. Ultrasonic testing uses high-frequency sounds pulses directed into the rails to detect problems, typically from a number of different angles. Sperry's most famous defect detection cars (also known as simply Sperry cars) have always been the now-historic gas-electric cars, better known as Doodlebugs. At first Sperry built their own cars but later they purchased them from the J.G. Brill Company. Not only did these cars come fitted with testing equipment they were also full-service, rolling hotels (complete with sleeping quarters, bathrooms, and kitchens) for the crew as many times accommodations were not available along the railroad tracks. Later, the company began acquiring several Doodlebugs secondhand from railroads (from companies such as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Lehigh Valley Railroad, and Chicago & North Western Railway), which had given up using the more efficient machines to move passengers on lightly populated branch and secondary rail lines. In all Sperry would wind up with nearly 30 of the gas-electric cars and today still employs many of them in regular service, which interestingly haven't changed much since they were built during the first half of the 20th century! As Sperry has improved its testing methods its equipment has become lighter and easier to handle. Because of this the company has begun to retire a few of its gas-electric cars and now employs more versatile heavy utility trucks to search and test for rail defects. The post card was published by Railcards.com The mystery company!!

Hold Your Breath!! We're Going Under Water.

This is a picture of the entrance to the tunnel that runs under the Detroit River so that trains can travel back and forth from Detroit, Michigan in the United States to Winsor, Ontario in Canada. Here are the words on the back of the post card: "The Detroit River Tunnel has the unique disctiction of being the only tunnel of its type ever built. It was constructed in sections, all work being done from the surface of the water without the use of compressed air. The tunnel is operated electrically. Constructioin was started October 1, 1906 and completed July 1, 1910. The length from portal to portal is 1 3/4 miles, and from summit of grade 2 1/2 miles. It was built by the Detroit River Tunnel Company for the M. C. R. R. at a cost of $8,500,000." The M.C.R.R. is the Michigan Central Rail Road. This tunnel gave the New York Central Railroad-controlled company a useful short-cut through southern Ontario connecting Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit. Back on April 5, 2014 I posted a blog about an electric locomotive used for maintaining the right of way in the tunnel: https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/posts/2934863145319975648?q=detroit

This post card is part of the Divided Back Era of post cards. This was from March 1, 1907 to 1915. And I can age the card even closer by seeing that the publisher of the card, S. H. Knox was only in business until 1911. So, the tunnel was completed in 1910 and the business (in Buffalo, New York) ended in 1911. That is a very short time frame of 18 months in which this post card was printed.