There it is, No it isn't, Yes it is, Oops, Gone Again

The locomotive pictured on the front of this post card is a 50-ton Atlas Locomotive built in 1940.

It is viewed, here, at the Junction of the Penn Central and Warwick Railway in Cranston, Rhode Island. Atlas Engine Works was around for a very, very long time. Wikipedia provides for us the following information about the company’s history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peckett_and_Sons The company began trading in 1864 as the Atlas Engine Works, in St. George, Bristol, as Fox, Walker and Company, building four and six-coupled saddle tank engines for industrial use. They also built stationary engines and pioneered steam tramcars, the first being tested in Bristol in 1877. Much of their output was exported, mostly 0-6-0, with some 0-4-0, 2-4-0 and 0-4-2. In 1878 they produced six 18 inch gauge 2-4-2 trench engines for the Royal Engineers at Chatham using Henry Handyside's steep gradient apparatus. Here is a link to some information about the apparatus: https://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/53/Handyside.htm They also produced nine 0-6-0STs for the Somerset and Dorset Railway. They were taken over by Thomas Peckett in 1880, becoming Peckett and Sons, Atlas Engine Works, Bristol. The company acquired limited liability some years later. By 1900 the two companies had built over 400 locomotives. The company continued producing a variety of small industrial and shunting engines at their factory located between Fishponds and Kingswood in Bristol. They became specialists in the field, with very precise specifications and standardisation of parts. The largest engine was an 0-8-0 built in 1931 for the Christmas Island Phosphate Company. The works were served by a branch line starting just southwest of Kingswood junction on the Midland line and ran for about 1 mile in a generally eastward direction. It also served some collieries in the Speedwell area. During the two World Wars, the works were especially busy, but by 1950 trade had largely dried up. Although in 1956 an attempt had been made to enter the diesel-mechanical market, the last steam engine was produced in 1958 and the company was taken over by Reed Crane & Hoist Co Ltd on 23, October 1961, which itself later went into liquidation. The information below is a compilation of American Rails and Wikipedia The Wikipedia link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Railway is this one; and the Amercian Rails by Adam Burns link https://www.american-rails.com/lhr.html is this one. The Lehigh & Hudson River's earliest heritage began with the tiny Warwick Valley Railroad organized on March 8, 1860, to build a line between Greycourt and Warwick, New York, a distance of about 10 miles. It opened for service on April 1, 1862. The Warwick Railway (reporting mark WRWK) was a railroad in Rhode Island. It was originally chartered in 1873 under the name Warwick Railroad, with a route connecting Cranston to Oakland Beach, eight miles away. Opened in 1875, the company survived until 1879 when it declared bankruptcy and shut down; it was resurrected in 1880 as the Rhode Island Central Railroad under New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) ownership and extended by two miles. In 1949, the NYP&B line was purchased by a newly formed Warwick Railway, which ended electrified service in favor of diesel locomotives in 1952, and abandoned another mile of track in 1954. The Warwick Railway provided freight service until 1979, when the Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W) began service following the Warwick Railway becoming insolvent.

This post card is another of Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialties post cards in my collection. The photo was taken In April of 1975 by Ronald N. Johnson.