Ever Bigger and Better

The railroad company shown on the front of this post card is one of the

ancestors of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad of today. It all began with the small St. Paul & Pacific and, by the time of his passing in 1917, the GN was a transcontinental carrier of more than 8,000 miles. This website provides a great short history of James Hill's involvement in the railroad history: https://www.bnsf.com/news-media/railtalk/heritage/jjhill.html The Great Northern Railway (GN) was the result of the foresight of James Jerome Hill. Hill was a Canadian-American businessman who settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. At 18, he began his career in the steamboat trade, and after 20 years, he became interested in investing and joined a group of powerful investors called the “Associates.” The Associates purchased the nearly bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (SP&P) in 1878, and a year later, the SP&P properties were reorganized as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba (SPM&M), with Hill becoming president in 1882. Hill became known as “The Empire Builder” as his dedication to railroad expansion led to the growth and development of the United States. Over the next three decades, Hill pursued the expansion of his rail line north to Canada and west toward the Pacific coast. Also in 1889, the railroad (now the Minneapolis & St. Cloud Railway) was renamed Great Northern Railway. GN’s Pacific Coast expansion began in 1890 near Havre, Montana, with the final spike connecting Seattle to the East driven near Scenic, Washington, in 1893. Then he purchased the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. These three railroad lines would become part of Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) when they merged with the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) in 1970, fulfilling one of Hill’s lifelong dreams more than 50 years after his death. BN merged with the Santa Fe Railway in 1995 to create BNSF.

The picture on the front of the post card is a 3600 horsepower F-45 "cowl" unit showing off its new "Big Sky Blue" paint scheme in 1969. The post card was published by Lyman E. Cox of Sacramento, California. I have 19 of his post cards in my collection. The picture was provided to him courtesy of the Great Northern Railway.

Things Evolve

The locomotive on the front of this post card is an example of General

Motors' Electro-Motive Diesel F40C passenger diesel. It is working for the North West Suburban Mass Transit (NWSMT) as number 43, “The Village of East Dundee”. Below is the history of Metra, the service into which the NWSMT eventually evolved. It is taken directly from the Metra website at: https://metra.com/about-metra Metra is the service mark used for rail service in northeast Illinois since 1985. But behind that simple name lies a convoluted history and a complex, multi-layered system. To understand how Metra operates, it really helps to know how Metra came about. Chicago has always been the railroad center of the nation, and it has had commuter rail service almost as long as it has had trains. Rail service peaked in the 1930s when Chicago had the largest public transportation system in the world. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the system was failing, with the CTA, private suburban bus companies, and commuter railroad companies experiencing big financial losses. To keep the system running, the General Assembly created the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in 1974. At first the RTA was purely an oversight and funding agency. It did not directly operate rail service but instead paid private railroad companies through purchase-of-service agreements to do so. It also began to reverse decades of disinvestment in the overall rail system. In 1980, the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Rail Corporation (NIRCRC) was created as a separate operating unit to run commuter rail service on behalf of the RTA. In 1982, after the Rock Island and the Milwaukee Road railroads went bankrupt, NIRCRC was directly operating commuter service on those lines (Rock Island, Milwaukee District West and Milwaukee District North). In 1983, the General Assembly reorganized the structure and funding of the RTA and also placed the operating responsibilities on three separate service boards: the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the Suburban Bus Division (PACE), and the Commuter Rail Division (CRD). The CRD was now responsible for supervising all commuter rail transportation in northeast Illinois through purchase of service agreements with various railroad companies, including NIRCRC, which continued to operate as a separate public corporation. Due to the complicated and patchwork nature of commuter rail at the time, the CRD in 1985 came up with the name “Metra” as a service mark for the system as a whole (short for “Metropolitan Rail”). The idea was to bring a unifying identity to all the various components, no matter who owned or operated them. Therefore, CRD and the entities it contracts with to operate the rail services in the northeast Illinois region, including NIRCRC, all use the “Metra” service mark. That system still is in place, although the ownership and/or operators of several lines have changed. Today, NIRCRC operates commuter service on the Metra Electric, Rock Island, Southwest Service, Heritage Corridor, North Central Service and the two Milwaukee lines. The three UP lines are operated by Union Pacific, and the BNSF line is run by BNSF Railway. This week I have focused on Metra and the NWSMT. Next week, I will share more information about the EMD F40 series of locomotives.

This photo was taken in 1974. Because it was published by Railcards.com there is no photo credit given.

It Was Fun While It Was Happening!!!

The locomotive on the front of this post card continues the locomotive theme of the past several blog posts. It is a General Electric U36B.

This picture was taken in 1975, sort of at the height of popularity for this railroad company: Auto-Train Corporation. It was the first well-know company to haul passengers and their vehicles all on the same train. The information below is taken from this website: https://themetrains.com/auto-train-main.htm "You'll never drive all the way again!", said the ad. And for ten glorious years you didn't have to. From December 6, 1971 to May 1, 1981 the auto-train Corporation took happy passengers -- and their cars -- over 1800 miles round trip from Washington, DC to sunny Florida aboard their red, white and purple auto-trains. In the late 1960s, the US government sponsored a study to determine if there was a market for trains that could carry both passengers and their autos as had been done successfully in Europe. The conclusion of the study was "yes". But the government also determined it could be run at a profit and so should be left to private industry. With almost all of the major railroads turning their passenger equipment over to Amtrak in the early 1970s, there would be no takers from among the usual suspects. Enter a young attorney named Eugene K. Garfield. While working as an assistant to the Transportation Secretary, Garfield became familiar with the government's study. The 33 year old used his personal savings to set up the Auto-Train Corporation in 1970. With financial backing from a NY investment bank, Garfield contracted with the SCL and the RF&P railroads to operate a train consisting of Auto-Train Corporation equipment from an Auto-Train terminal in Lorton, VA in the Washington, DC area to Sanford, FL just a few miles from the new Walt Disney World. With dozens of railroads eager to rid themselves of surplus passenger equipment, the Auto-Train Corporation was able to purchase some of the finest equipment ever built -- and at bargain prices. To create this new breed of train, the corporation needed to identify suitable auto carriers. The solution was found in Canadian National bi-level auto carriers. These would carry passengers' cars in enclosed safety and would be put at the front of the consist. And what a consist it was! Every coach was a dome car. The best domes of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific and Western Pacific were brought together with sleepers and diners from the ACL, SAL, L&N, N&W and others. Rounding out each consist was a steam generator car and, in later years, a caboose. The first train left Lorton on December 6, 1971 for the 856 mile trip to Sanford. The service was so successful that soon a second route was added -- from Louisville, KY to Sanford. The new service wasn't nearly as well received and put a drag on corporate finances. The next six years would be a struggle. Even as the Louisville service was reworked and wound down, a trio of accidents took their toll. Insurance premiums went up and passenger revenues went down. On Thursday April 30, 1981, the last auto-trains departed Lorton and Sanford, passing in the night. When they arrived at their destinations May 1, the Auto-Train Corporation was done.

The post card was published by Railcards.com I know absolutely nothing about them except that their mailing address was a post office box in Alameda, California. I have 204 of their post cards; this publisher is third on the list of publishers by quantity in my collection. And, yet, I can tell you nothing about the publisher.

Another Exaggerated Themed Post Card

In three days this post card will turn 114 years old. At least, it will be 114 years since it was mailed.

This is a post card that shows how great Edward H. Mitchell's imagination was. He was able, in 1909 - the copyright is in the upper left-had corder of the front of the card - to superimpose a bunch of oranges onto a gondola of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Then he added "1881 - A CARLOAD OF NAVEL ORANGES FROM __________ ". Another stroke of genius: the purchaser could add the city onto the front of the post card to boast to the reader where the sender was.