Is that Henry Ford or Thomas Edison getting on the Train?

The first thing I notice when I look at the picture of the locomotive on this post card, is how large, and how unusually shaped the smoke stack is. The train locomotive pictured on the front of this post card is what they call

an “American” type of locomotive in the Whyte Classification nomenclature. This one is a wood-buring locomotive. I know this is true because of 1) the load of wood behind the locomotive in the tender and, 2) the shape of the smoke stack. I think this locomotive is one of the types of locomotives that many people think of when they hear “steam locomotive”. The website: https://steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=4-4-0 tells us that “the locomotive was widely used in North America during the 1800's. This wheel arrangement was well suited to the grades and curvature of the railroad of that time. Around 25,000 4-4-0 locomotives were built by companies including Rogers, Baldwin, Cooke and Mason.” The website also includes a listing of a) all the railroad companies that used 4-4-0 locomotives and b) where all the surviving locomotives can be found – whether on display or being used. This particular 4-4-0 is sitting at the Smith Creek Station in Greenfield Village, near Dearborn, Michigan. Today, Dearborn is home to the Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford actually has a connection to this station! The following information (the picture is from the second website) was taken from these two websites: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/49722#slide=gs-218677 http://www.michiganrailroads.com The Smiths Creek Depot stood on the Grand Trunk Western Railway, about ten miles southwest of Port Huron, Michigan. The railroad station was the center of 19th century small-town life. More than a place to catch a train, the depot was where customers sent and received packages and telegrams, caught up on the latest news, and shared gossip. The station was built in 1858 by the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. Smith's Creek was settled about 1861 and was the county seat of St. Clair county from 1869 to 1871.

Smith's Creek was a station stop on the Grand Trunk Western (GTW) line from Port Huron to West Detroit. As a boy, Thomas Edison operated a concession on GTW trains from here including a printed newspaper. Later, Henry Ford moved the Smith's Creek depot to historic Greenfield Village in Edison's honor. The railroad built a new depot in 1929 to replace it. Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum is a historical village created by Henry Ford in the 1920's and opened in 1933 in west Dearborn. The Village has a connection on the Michigan Central main line (Detroit to Chicago) about 1 mile west of the Southfield expressway. The Village has a standard-gauge railroad loop which is about 1.5 miles long which pulls tourists around the facility from Smith's Creek Station. The line also has period semaphore signaling installed, as well as a working roundhouse and water tower.

This post card is what is called a "Real Photo Post Card". It is a picture that taken from a camera and transferred (printed) directly to the post card. It was published by Artcraft Photo Company of East Rutherford, New Jersey. In my mind, I have made a connection between East Rutherford and Thomas Edison. Menlo Park, NJ is only 30 miles from East Rutherford. It would certainly be interesting to know if there is a connection among Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and the owner of Artcraft Photo Company.....

From This to a Parking Lot

The Grand Trunk station was a historic railroad station in Hamilton, Ontario, which was located on Stuart Street, at the beginning of Caroline Street North. In 1885, an effort was made to beautify the area to the east of the station itself with ornamental gardens.

You can see the results of that effort in the picture on the front of the post card. The embankment along Stuart Street provided an opportunity to let passengers passing by to know exactly what city they were in, with the word "Hamilton" written with white stones. If you would like to see what it looks like today (see title of this post,)the GPS coordinates of where the station was located are: 43°16′05″N 79°52′20″W Michael Willson Browne, one of the pioneers of the shipping industry in Hamilton, moved to Hamilton in 1836, and entered into a partnership with Daniel Charles Gunn, who retired in 1847. Mr. Browne became manager of the Grand Trunk Railway's office in Hamilton in 1864. The company was incorporated on November 10, 1852, as the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada to build a railway line between Montreal and Toronto. The charter was soon extended east to Portland, Maine and west to Sarnia, Canada West. In 1853 the GTR purchased the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railway from Montreal to the Canada East – Vermont border, and the parent company Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad through to the harbour facilities at Portland. A line was also built to Lévis, via Richmond from Montreal in 1855, part of the much-talked about "Maritime connection" in British North America. In the same year it purchased the Toronto and Guelph Railroad, whose railway was already under construction. But the Grand Trunk Railway Company changed the original route of the T&G and extended the line to Sarnia, a hub for Chicago-bound traffic. By July, 1856, the section from Sarnia to Toronto opened, and the section from Montreal to Toronto opened in October of that year. By 1859 a ferry service was established across the St. Clair River to Fort Gratiot (now Port Huron, Michigan). GTR underwent serious financial difficulties as a result of the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and its shareholders, primarily in the United Kingdom, were determined to prevent the company from being nationalized as well. Eventually on July 12, 1920, GTR was placed under control of another federal government Board of Management while legal battles continued for several more years. Finally, on January 20, 1923, GTR was fully absorbed into the CNR on a date when all constituent companies were merged into the Crown Corporation. At the time that the GTR was fully merged into CNR, approximately 125 smaller railway companies comprised the Grand Trunk system, totalling 12,800 kilometres (8,000 mi) in Canada and 1,873 kilometres (1,164 mi) in the United States. I googled the location of this train station to see what it looks like today - IT IS NOW A PARKING LOT!! The back of this post card tells me that Canadians have been polite for a very long time. I have three post cards with this picture on the front.

The back of one of them tells me that it was mailed on December 8th of 1906. That is 114 years ago.

If you look in the upper right hand corner of another one of the post cards, where the postage stamp is to be placed, you will see the traditional rectangle to visually show you where the stamp goes. The words in the rectangle say, "Postage stamp should be affixed here." How polite is that?!!! .....on the other hand, if you look at the rectangle on a post card from the United States that is contemporary to our Hamilton Station (both approximately 1908) you will see that the message is much more directive, "Place Stamp Here".

I love being Canadian!

And You Thought that the Yukon Was Cold

The caption on the back of this post card tells us that these are railway workers clearing snow in February of 1869. They are doing this at the Grand Trunk Railway’s station located in Levis, Quebec, Canada. You can see that it was quite the snow fall!! The men in the background are much higher than those standing in front of the 4 engines. It looks like all four of the locomotives are what the Whyte Notation of engines calls the American. The wheel configuration is 4 – 4 – 0.

The railroad on which they are working was not always the Grand Trunk Railway. It started out as the Intercolonial Railway in 1872 (the first run was in November of this year). Its purpose was to connect Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. Although the plans for the railway existed since the 1830s, it was not until the confederation of Canada in 1867 that it actually began in earnest. Sandford Fleming issued his report on the best intercolonial rail routes. He proposed three lines, but argued for what he called the Chaleur Bay route. He argued that it would be the most economically viable. It would join the manufacturing centres of Montréal, Kingston and Toronto to maritime towns and ports, pass through New Brunswick lumber and fishing towns, and Nova Scotia coal mining and shipbuilding communities. In July of 1876, the railway was declared to be completed. This completed the line from Québec, through the rail hub at Moncton, to the Bay of Fundy and then through Truro to Halifax. The 1,100 km line was a technical marvel that used the latest technology and construction methods to keep the rail lines straight and level and with nearly all bridges made not of wood, as was the custom of the day, but the far safer and more durable iron. In 1919, the Intercolonial Railway was included in the amalgamation that developed into the Canadian National Railways Company. The station, which is not pictured on this post card; it is behind the photographer, is a two-storey, stone railway station building located on the east (town) side of CN railway tracks that historically ran along the east bank of the St. Lawrence River. The Lévis Railway Station (Intercolonial) was commemorated in 1976 as the effective terminus of the Intercolonial Railway from Halifax. The heritage value of this site resides in its association with the historic Intercolonial Railway illustrated by its physical survival from the nineteenth century. The Intercolonial Railway, originally built between Halifax and Rivière-du-Loup (1867), extended its main line to end at Lévis in 1879 by the purchase of the Charny/Rivière-du-Loup line constructed by the Grand Trunk Railway between 1854 and 1860. In 1884 the Intercolonial Railway extensively remodelled the Lauzon town hall/market (1864) in Lévis to serve as its station. In the years that followed, the Grand Trunk Railway and the Québec Central Railway also used terminal facilities in the building. Key elements that contribute to the heritage character of the site include: the rectangular massing of the two-storey building under a hipped roof with hipped roof dormers on either side; regularly spaced, segmentally arched windows; the station’s simple classical details; the few details of the original town hall/market building still visible on the ground floor (footprint, openings and their alignment), craftsmanship and materials of the original stone exterior walls; the siting, immediately beside the former tracks and set back from the public road by an open space; the date stone ''1864", originally positioned on the façade, mounted in a commemorative monument.

The post card was copyrighted in 1999 by Kindred Canada. I went onto the internet to see what I could find about Kindred Canada today. What I found was either Kindred Sinkware, which I figured was not the correct website, or Kindred Canada, which was announcing a deal about distributing canabis. Neither of these two fit the parameters I was looking for. Kindred Canada, evidently, WAS a company in Brooks, Alberta back then; it no longer exists. The publisher of the post card must have wrapped up business. However, on the bright side, the back of the post card does tell us that the photographer was Alexander Henderson and that the photo was provided to the printer by the National Archives of Canada.

One Hundred and Eight Years Ago

From Wikipedia: The Grand Trunk Railway (reporting mark GT) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The railway was operated from headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, with corporate headquarters in London, England (4 Warwick House Street). It cost an estimated $160 million to build. The Grand Trunk, its subsidiaries, and the Canadian Government Railways were precursors of today's Canadian National Railways.

The Grand Trunk station was a historic railroad station in Hamilton, Ontario, which was located on Stuart Street, at the beginning of Caroline Street North. In 1885, an effort was made to beautify the area to the east of the station itself with ornamental gardens. The embankment along Stuart Street provided an opportunity to let passengers passing by to know exactly what city they were in, with the word "Hamilton" written with white stones. You can see this on the embankment to the left of the station and below the white building with the red roof.

The message is Marjorie telling her cousin, Florence, that all is well and that she was the housekeeper while her mother and Martha went to Detroit over Easter. The publisher of the post card, W.G. MacFarland, was a very active post card publisher. If you search for the name you will find quite the number of results, including pictures of his post cards.