Not "Old Maude", but a Relative!

The locomotive on the front of this post card is one of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s mighty class EM-1 articulated steam locomotives.

It heads up a string of hopper cars as it roars through Corriganville, Maryland on April 29, 1955. It was built by Baldwin in 1944 as one of thirty for service on the Cumberland Division. It was mentioned that this locomotive is an articulated steam locomotive. This website gives some good information about what being articulated means: https://www.american-rails.com/articulated.html An articulated steam locomotive is defined as any design which has at least two sets of drivers, with the lead set having the ability to swivel independently from the rigid frame to more easily negotiate curves. This technological development allowed steam locomotives to grow in size prodigiously. With builders and railroads no longer limited to the size of a locomotive's wheel base, arrangements became longer, larger, heavier, and more powerful. The first use of the articulated steam locomotive in the United States was, as mentioned above, on the B&O in 1904 which collaborated with the American Locomotive Company to create an 0-6-6-0 design listed as Class DD-1 #2400 and given the name "Old Maude." The steamer was manufactured as a true compound, Mallet and for the most part the railroad was pleased with the experimental locomotive. The Mallet design was first introduced by Anatole Mallet (pronounced "Mal-lay") of Switzerland when he constructed an articulated locomotive in France during the 1870s that featured an independent, swiveling front driver that was not mounted rigidly to the rest of the frame.

The post card was published by Audio-Visual Designs in Earlton, New York after 1963. There is a zip code included in their address and zip codes were introduced in 1961.

Up and At 'Em!!

It looks like this locomotive is being prepared for the day’s work by three men. There are two in the front and one on the top.

It looks like the one on the top may be adding the chemicals to stabilize the water that will preserve the integrity of the tank. When I looked up this locomotive on the internet I found that it was a uniquely built engine. Here is what I found at this website: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-6-6-2&railroad=cwpc In the Whyte Classification system it is known as a 2-6-6-2T (that makes it a tank engine, that is, it carried its own water supply instead of a tender carrying it). The number of locomotives in this class: 1. This is the only locomotive of its kind! It was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1929. It weighed 222,000 pounds with a water capacity of 2,500 gallons and the boiler pressure was rated for 200 psi. It used 1,200 gallons of oil as the fuel. The driving wheels were 44 inches in diameter. It is a Mallet engine (you can see both cylinders); the high pressure cylinder was 16” in diameter with a 24 inch stroke; the low pressure cylinder was 26” in diameter with a 24 inch stroke. The tractive effort was 34,436 pounds. The post card has a reminder written on the front that it is part of the collection of G. Anderson. When I look up G. Anderson, all I find is a photographer that specialized in things of the Mormon Church. There is nothing that says he spent time in Oregon photographing trains. The locomotive belonged to Crown-Williamette (sic.). This is what I found about the Crown-Willamette Paper Company: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-6-6-2&railroad=cwpc The Crown-Willamette Paper Company was formed in 1914 when the Crown Columbia Paper Company merged with the Willamette Pulp and Paper Company. (By the way, it is pronounced to rhyme with "damn it"; my wife and I have visited there and that is how they taught us how to pronounce Willamette) The Crown Columbia Paper Company was itself the result of a merger in 1905 between the Crown Paper Company of Oregon City and the Columbia River Paper Company of Camas, established by Henry Pittock in 1883 to supply newsprint for his newspaper, the Oregonian. The Crown-Willamette Paper Company had headquarters in San Francisco and Portland and paper plants in a number of cities and towns across Washington, Oregon, and California. These towns included Astoria, Lebanon, West Linn, Oregon City and Seaside in Oregon, Cathlamet and Camas in Washington, and Floristan and Truckee in California. In 1928, the Zellerbach Corporation of San Francisco merged with the Crown-Willamette Paper Company to form the Crown Zellerbach Corporation, which by the 1930s, became the largest paper company on the West Coast and the second largest in the United States. The mill at Camas, Washington was one of Crown Zellerbach's leading producers and became the largest speciality paper mill in the world.

This post card is a "Real Photo" post card. You can see that by looking at the back of the card. It was printed on Kodak Paper and the words "Photo Post Card" are at the top. I figure that this post card had to be made after 1950. The little square where the stamp is to placed gives that away.

Logging Locomotive - Another Type (3 of 5)

As we have seen in the past few posts, getting through the steep grades of logging mountain sides was accomplished through many designs of steam locomotives. This engine is called a "Mallet" (pronounced mal-ay);

it was invented by a Swiss (think lots of mountains) engineer Anatole Mallet who lived from 1837 to 1919. A Mallet engine has one boiler that is connected to two sets of driving cylinders; this is also called an articulated engine. What makes this a Mallet engine is that the steam goes through one set of cylinders (rear) at high pressure, the exhaust from those cylinders is at a lower pressure, but strong enough to still be used in the second set of cylinders (front set) before it is sent out the exhaust. The picture on the front of this post card is of a Mallet 2-6-6-2 built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It is being used at the Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills in Sekiu, near Clallam Bay on the westen side of the Olympic Peninsula.

The photo was taken around 1930. The post card continues to show you some of the post cards in my collectioin that are from the Kinsey's Locomotive series. I will continue next week with another, different, design of steam locomotive also used in the logging industry.

Two Birds with One Stone...

This post card shows how the Southern Pacific Railroad solved two challenges with one design. The first, and most obvious is the fact that this engine is not running backwards. The front of the train is to the right, where the cab is. In the northern California routes, especially through the Sierra Nevada mountains, the engineers' lives were being threatened. As the locomotive entered the various tunnels, the smokestack led the way. As they continued through the tunnel there was no place for the smoke and gases to escape. The train crew had to drive right through the heavy pollution, breathe in the poisons and, perhaps succumb to lack of oxygen. The solution to this was to move the cab forward. The fireman, in a coal-fired locomotive, was just below the smokestack rather than behind it; thus, he, too, avoided asphyxiation. The first cab-forward locomotive was delivered in 1908.
The second challenge that is solved in the locomotive shown on this post card was the need for power. Some of the grades the Southern Pacific faced were as much as 2.5%. Getting through the steep grades required either many engines linked together - or this solution. This engine is called a "Mallet" (pronounced mal-ay); it was invented by a Swiss (think lots of mountains) engineer Anatole Mallet who lived from 1837 to 1919. A Mallet engine has one boiler that is connected to two sets of driving cylinders; this is also called an articulated engine. What makes this a Mallet engine is that the steam goes through one set of cylinders (rear) at high pressure, the exhaust from those cylinders is at a lower pressure, but strong enough to still be used in the second set of cylinders (front set) before it is sent out the exhaust.

Again, this is an Edward Mitchell post card as indicated by the back of the post card.

Quite the Pedigree

The engine in this picture is a 2-8-8-2 Mallet Compound Engine. It is pictured here in La Grande, Oregon. The first compound-compression locomotive with an articulated pair of drive wheel assemblies was designed by Swiss engineer Anatole Mallet (pronounced SORT OF LIKE: "Malley") in France. The front driver assembly included two low-pressure cylinders. The rear driver assembly included two high-pressure cylinders. The single boiler was rigidly attached to the rear driver assembly.

Mallet locomotives in the USA followed the design created by Anatole Mallet and were called Mallet locomotives as a result. Like Anatole's original design, these locomotives used compound expansion where steam was first used the two high-pressures cylinders and then exhausted to be used a second time in the two larger low-pressure cylinders in the front of the locomotive.

The USA later experimented with the same basic design but with four high-pressure cylinders. These were still articulated locomotives but were no longer true "Mallets" because they used simple expansion instead of compound expansion. Unfortunately, no good name for this design ever emerged, and they tended to be loosely called 'Mallets' as well.

This locomotive was built in 1909. Technically, it is classified as an MC-1 locomotive. The diameter of the driving wheels is a mere 57 inches with a tractive effort of 94,880 pounds. This is produced by cylinders that are 26 inches in diameter with a 40 inch stroke. It burned oil as the fuel of choice.

Built for the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company as Number 451 in 1909, it was renumbered to the Oregon Washington Railroad & Navigation Company’s 701 in 1911. From this we can surmise that while the post card is from the divided back era and could be from between 1907 to 1915, the picture (valid from 1909 to 1911) tells us that the post card is from somewhere between 1909 and 1915.


The title of this blog is "Quite the Pedigree". That is referring to the line-up of Companies involved in the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company. When I go to Wikipedia to look up the history of the O.W.R. & N. I find this at the beginning: “The Oregon–Washington was incorporated November 23, 1910, in Oregon for the principal purpose of purchasing and consolidating the properties of certain corporations which were then controlled through stock ownership by the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Oregon Short Line Railroad Company.

Accordingly, on December 23, 1910, it acquired by purchase all of the properties of 12 corporations, except their corporate franchises and certain of their assets, and, on the same date, purchased a part of the properties of 3 other corporations. It subsequently acquired the property of 2 other corporations.”

Then a list follows… there are 34 transactions listed. They vary from “sold to”, to “conveyed to”, to “named changed to”. The list ends in the year 1916; but, it all starts with the incorporation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company by a special act of the Washington Territory on December 16, 1860.

The post card is from the Divided Back Era (1907 - 1915) and it was published by the Pacific Novelty Company. The following is from the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York: This publishing company printed many postcards that were duplicates of postcards published by Edward Mitchell. Mitchell was a partner with other photographers in this publishing company than at some point he bought the others out. A major publisher and printer of view-cards depicting California in halftone lithography. They produced cards in different styles, most of which were printed in Germany. They eventually sold off their own printing department to Herman Vogel who renamed it Quadricolor Press. Pacific Novelty went on to produce photochromes that were manufactured in the United States.