Still Going Strong After All These Years

The locomotive pictured on the front of this post card is an Alco RSD12.

In this picture from 1982 it is at rest after being employed to lug heavy ore trains for the Lake Superior & Ishpeming Railroad (LSI). It is one of twelve Alco RSD12 units owned by the LSI. This one, and three others, are ex-Chesapeake & Ohio locomotives. In 1893 the Lake Superior & Ishpeming Railway was established for the purpose of hauling iron ore. Shortly thereafter the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Mining Company took over the project after a rate dispute. With strong financial support the railroad began construction in December of 1895. After less than a year a 21-mile route was completed from mines located near West Ishpeming to Marquette. It hauled over one million tonnes of ore in its first year. The Lake Superior & Ishpeming Railroad never grew much larger than 200 miles of trackage. It has shrunk down to running only two lines, one from Eagle Mills Yard in Negaunee to the Empire and Tilden mines in Palmer. The other line goes from Eagle Mills Yard to the dock in Marquette. LSI has trackage rights on the CN from Negaunee to the Republic area via Ishpeming. The ALCO RSD-12 was a C-C diesel-electric locomotive rated at 1,800 horsepower. 171 locomotives were produced. Eight different railroads purchased these locomotives. Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México purchased 73 of them. They were used in much the same manner as its four-axle counterpart, the ALCO RS11, although the six-motor design allowed for better tractive effort at lower speeds. These websites are the source of the mishmash of information above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALCO_RSD-12 https://michiganrailroads.com/lake-superior-ishpeming-railroad https://www.american-rails.com/lsi.html

Here is the back of the post card. I know nothing about the publisher.

Michigan Interstate... What is that?

The ALCO RS2 locomotives on the front of this post card have the Ann Arbor Railroad name on the side. The lead engine has a Michigan Interstate logo on its side. When Conrail began on April 1, 1976, the Ann Arbor Railroad ceased to exist. Michigan arranged for a new company, Michigan Interstate Railway, to run it, which lasted from October 1, 1977, to September 30, 1982. This last bit of information came from this website, which has a great article about the history of the Ann Arbor Railroad: https://www.trains.com/ctr/railroads/fallen-flags/remembering-the-ann-arbor-railroad/ The Ann Arbor Railroad (AA) was as much a steamship line as a railroad. Built from Toledo, Ohio, northwest to Frankfort, Mich., it existed for one reason — to move freight in car ferries across Lake Michigan to bypass Chicago. From 1910 to 1968, “the Annie” operated 320 car ferry route-miles versus 292 miles of railroad. During the 1940s, up to six ferries made the round trip from Boat Landing, as AA called its yard in Elberta on the south side of Frankfort harbor, to two Wisconsin and two Michigan Upper Peninsula ports. The boats ran year-round on a tight schedule, timed to match with three pairs of scheduled Toledo freights, where AA interchanged with five trunk lines. Well-kept 2-8-2s powered those short, fast trains across AA’s rolling profile until 1950, when Alco FA2s took over. The Wabash had eyed the Ann Arbor since the late 1890s, as the car ferry service fit into its expansion plans. On November 2, 1925, it took stock control, and soon, Wabash ordered the last ferry built for the Annie, the Wabash. Launched March 19, 1926, she was the largest Great Lakes car ferry to date. AA began to dieselize in 1941 with a 44-ton Whitcomb, adding two Alco S1s in 1944. By fall 1951, steam was done as AA finished its roster with 14 FA2s, 4 S3s, and 2 RS1s. The Eastern mergers of the 1960s ultimately doomed the old Ann Arbor. As planning for Penn Central went on, the Norfolk & Western (N&W) merged with Wabash, Nickel Plate, and two smaller roads in 1964. N&W wanted no part of the Ann Arbor and its costly ferries, so AA was foisted off on the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad (DT&I), which was profitable by the 1960s. With Interstate Commerce Commission approval, DT&I took over the Ann Arbor on August 31, 1963, Today, the last two AA car ferries and the two RS1s still exist, and a new Ann Arbor Railroad, owned by Watco, operates Toledo to Ann Arbor. Their website has a great video that tells us about the current owners. https://www.watco.com/service/rail/ann-arbor-railroad-aa/ Ann Arbor Railroad (AA) • Primary Commodities Watco moves any commodity, and on this railroad, it’s primarily auto parts and finished vehicles, along with bulk materials like flour, sugar, grain, plastics, sand, cement, recyclables, fertilizer, paper, lumber, and petroleum. • Track Miles • 82.43 • Track Capacity • 286 • Interchange Points • Diann, MI – IORY • Milan, MI – NS • Osmer, MI – GLC • Toledo, OH – CN, CSX, NS, WE • Year Watco Operations Began • 2013

The post card was published by that great mystery publisher www.Railcards.com out of Alameda, California.

Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad

The passenger train rounding the bend on Little Traverse Bay, as shown on the front of this post card, belonged to the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad.

Wikipedia does provide a longer and more detailed history of the railroad; I have condensed this history here. Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad according to Wikipedia: The company was formed on January 18, 1854. The company opened service between Bridge Street in Grand Rapids to Cedar Springs, Michigan, on December 25, 1867, a distance of about 20 miles (32 km). Six months later, in July of 1868 it had 2 engines in service: the Pioneer and the Muskegon. At that time the company also utilized a single passenger coach and single baggage car, six box cars, 24 flat cars and five hand cars. On June 21, 1869, the last rail connecting Cedar Springs to Morley, Michigan was laid. The track from the south into Grand Rapids was completed September 13, 1870. The line extended north to Big Rapids, Michigan, by October 1, 1870, and a train first traveled between Fort Wayne and Big Rapids on that date. In June 1871, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad Company took control of the road and property of the Cincinnati, Richmond and Fort Wayne Railroad Company, extending the line south to Cincinnati. The line between Paris and Petoskey, Michigan, was completed November 25, 1873. The railroad was opened to Mackinaw City, Michigan, and the Straits of Mackinac on July 3, 1882. The total length of the line at this time was 529 miles (851 km). As of July 1888, the railroad had expanded its fleet to 66 locomotives and 3,100 cars. Its gross earnings were close to $2.3 million in 1887. In 1891 the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad featured the longest North-South line in the country. The railroad served to accelerate the settlement of Northern Michigan, which was largely a wilderness in the mid-19th century. On July 2, 1896, the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad reorganized as the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway. That is the railway that owned the train on the front of this post card. By 1907 four passenger trains were running north to and from Mackinaw City daily. Passenger train fares were not enough to support the railroad and ridership declined. In 1909 the railroad reported a profit of 24.4 cents for every passenger for each mile carried; by 1921 the railroad was losing 19.5 cents per passenger mile. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad was bought by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1918.

The back of the post card has been ruined by some dark stain. The good news is that, whatever it is, it did not leak through to the front of the card. The post card was published by Alton G. Cook (1862 – 1923) from Petoskey, Michigan. Here is a quote from an article I found about Mr. Cook’s business. “His latest booklet is entitled Summer Resorts on Little Traverse Bay and is one of the handsomest souvenirs ever published of Petoskey and Northern Michigan. In addition to all of these, Mr. Cook finds time to take pictures for the G R & I Railroad company for the quantities of advertising matter they send out every year. The making of post cards, which he began about five years ago has proved one of the most successful lines he has yet undertaken and, as he is continually working to improve and enlarge it, it is hard to predict what he will accomplish in the future. He runs an exclusive Post Card Store at 208 Midway which is said to carry the most complete line of cards of any in this region.”

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.....

International Crossing

Built in 1887 by the Dominion Bridge Company out of Montreal, Quebec and designed and engineered by Strauss Bascule Bridge Company (Strauss Engineering Company) of Chicago, Illinois

The Structure Type is described as A Metal 8 Panel Pin-Connected Camelback Through Truss, Fixed and Approach Spans: Metal 12 Panel Rivet-Connected Pennsylvania Through Truss, Movable: Double Leaf Bascule (Heel Trunnion)

The main span is 368 feet long (there are 9 spans); the entire bridge length is 5,580 feet long (over a mile); and the roadbed over which the train travels is 21 feet wide.

It was renovated in 1913.

The International Railroad Bridge is a magnificent landmark bridge whose significant size comes from a large number of smaller spans, rather than a single large bridge. Indeed, the bridge is unparalleled in its variety of span types. It is one of the few bridges in North America to have more than one type of movable span. It is one of the few bridges in North America to have more than one type of movable span. Indeed, within this bridge each of the three most common movable bridge types is represented. When all these sections are combined, the result is a bridge that is unrivaled in variety, size, beauty, and history. These separate and different structures that carry the railroad over the St. Mary's River and its canal systems are collectively referred to as the International Railroad Bridge. The bridge was designed for and continues to carry a single set of tracks. In addition to the variety of span types, the bridge's existing spans were also constructed at different times. Two dates are most significant in the bridge's history. First, is 1887, which is what the oldest spans on this bridge date to, including the fixed camelback spans and the swing bridge. The second most significant date is 1913 when the Strauss Bascule Bridge Company designed the largest (and one of the most unusual) bascule span in the world for this bridge. Because of the variety of span types and span ages, photo galleries for this bridge as well as the narratives have all been organized into separate sections by bridge span type. The bridge crosses the river and canals of St. Marys River by making use of islands, some of which are artificial islands created by the locks. As such, from a technical definition, this bridge could be thought of as several bridges, since there are a few short sections that has track running along the ground. However, the structure is generally referred to in discussion as a single bridge, and therefore this bridge is being presented here on HistoricBridges.org in that format.

How to Avoid Asphyxiation

The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel is an international tunnel that connects Detroit, Michigan with Windsor, Ontario. It is an international tunnel because it connects two countries by railroad and because it was built for owned or leased by companies on both sides of the border. The Detroit River Tunnel Company (also very international – read below) built it in 1910 for the Canada Southern Railway; it was leased by the Michigan Central Railroad and it was owned by the New York Central Railroad. Are you confused yet?

It was built to give the Canada Southern Railway and the Michigan Central Railroad a competitive chance at business. In 1891 the Grand Trunk Railway opened the St. Clair Tunnel at Port Huron, giving it the business advantage.

When the Michigan and Canada Bridge and Tunnel Company and the Canada and Michigan Bridge and Tunnel Company from Canada merged on August 15, 1905, the Detroit River Tunnel Company was formed. This company began construction of the tunnel in October of 1906 under the engineering supervision of The New York Central Railway's engineering vice president, William J. Wilgus. The $8.5 million Michigan Central Railway Tunnel opened for passenger service July 26, 1910. Freight service began September 15th and on October 16th all rail traffic began using the tunnel. It is one and three eighths miles long and it is still in use today.

The above information was abridged from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Central_Railway_Tunnel

The picture on the post card shows how the coal or wood burning steam engines could go under such a long tunnel without asphyxiating the crew or passengers. They used an electric engine.

Looking at the back of the post card we see that it was published by the Wolverine News Company out of Detroit, Michigan. The information is down the left-hand side of the post card.

There is not a lot of information to be found on the internet about this company.

I did see that they printed baseball cards. One website had a picture of a 1907 Ty Cobb baseball card; the owner wanted to know how much it was worth. Another showed a series of post cards from Ann Arbor printed in 1908. I also found a detailed, official atlas of Wayne County, compiled and drawn from authentic records and private surveys by Sauer Brothers. It was printed by Wolverine News Co., c1915. Finally, I also found a 192 page book written by the Hearne Brothers and printed by the Wolverine News Company in 1936.

The post card comes from the Divided Back Era; the Address Side is clearly labelled but it is taken for granted that the other side is the Message Side. I just noticed that under the T and above the R in POST CARD there is a logo that tells us that Curt Otto Teich printed this post card. The number at the bottom of the card (A-17410) then tells us that this was printed between 1908 and 1910.

Lake Shore and Michigan Southern

This post card is a picture of three trains parked at the Lake Shore Depot in Hillsdale, Michigan. This is part of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad (LS & MS RR).

We can see that there were at least three tracks at the station, but I know from another source that there were at least four tracks. If you look in the very front part of the crowd between the two steam engines you can see a water standpipe. It was used to fill the tenders of the steam engines.

Take a look at the telephone poles. That is a lot of wire on those poles!!

Here is the history of the LS & MS RR as found in Wikipedia: "The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833 and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, NY to Chicago, primarily along the south shore of Lake Erie (in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) and across northern Indiana. The line's trackage is still used as a major rail transportation corridor and hosts Amtrak passenger trains, with the ownership in 1998 split at Cleveland between CSX to the west and Norfolk Southern in the east." By 1873 Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt had purchased the LS & MS and incorporated it into the New York Central Railroad. He needed this line to connect New York to Chicago.

The post card was made by the Union News Company.

The following information is from the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City: It was based in New York between 1908 and 1969 this was a wholly owned subsidiary of the American News Company they became major distributors of postcards and other printed items through their newsstands at hotels, rail and subway stations. Their cards were published by a variety of different companies including American News, Curt Teich, Robbins Brothers, and Valentine & Sons. Sometimes only their logo appears on a card, but it is often hand stamped on cards not originally published for them.

The post card was received in Norwalk, Ohio on September 5, 1911. There is no postmark to say when it was sent. Evidently, a young lady is keeping her mother posted about her whereabouts and their well-being. We can’t tell if this is a honeymoon or two people travelling for a different reason. It says that they are going to Angola, which is in the northeast corner of Indiana.