Best Friend of Charleston

As mentioned last week, here is a post card with the “Best Friend of Charleston” on the front. The following is from Wikipedia:

The locomotive was built for the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company by the West Point Foundry of New York in 1830. Disassembled for shipment by boat to Charleston, SC, it arrived in October of that year and was unofficially named the Best Friend of Charleston. After its inaugural run on Christmas Day, the Best Friend was used in regular passenger service along a six mile demonstration route in Charleston. For the time, this locomotive was considered one of the fastest modes of transport available, taking its passengers "on the wings of wind at the speed of fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour. The only mode of travel that was any faster was by an experienced horse and rider.

On June 17, 1831, the Best Friend earned a rather grisly first — it became the first locomotive in the US to suffer a boiler explosion, seriously injuring the engine's crew. The explosion is said to have been caused by the fireman tying down the steam pressure release valve; he had tired of listening to it whistle, so to stop the noise he closed the valve permanently (another account has the fireman placing a stout piece of lumber on the safety valve and sitting on it). The blocked valve caused the pressure within the boiler to exceed its capacity, and it exploded. The resulting blast was said to have hurled metal fragments over a wide area and killed the fireman.

This post card was published by the Audio Visual Designs. The indication of this is the strip that separates the address side from the message side of the post card. Their name and address forms that line. The company still exists today. The following is an excerpt from their website at http://www.audiovisualdesigns.com/about.asp

Founded in 1964 by the late Carl H. Sturner, Audio-Visual Designs has been a leader in providing high quality railroad images products for over 4 decades. The business was originally located in Earlton, NY. The name was derived by the products sold at the time – audio soundtracks of trains well as visual items (post cards, books, & calendars). The first All Pennsy Calendar was published in 1966 and for many years used exclusively the photos of Don Wood, a long time friend of Carl's. In the late 80's, Carl started showcasing other photographer's work as well. Railroad Christmas cards were added to the line of products early on and with a few exceptions have featured real photos of trains in action. Three railroad books have been published by Audio-Visual Designs: I Remember Pennsy, Locomotives in My Life, and The Unique New York and Long Branch: all of which were projects worked on by Carl and Mr. Wood. Audio-Visual Designs has also published books for other non-railroad related organizations.

By the time of his untimely passing in 1995, Carl had grown Audio-Visual Designs into an established icon in the railfan community - providing an enjoyable aspect of both the railfanning and model railroading hobbies. We serve many excursion railroads, museums, and hobby shops with stock post card images, greeting cards, custom products and the All Pennsy Calendar.
In 1997, the business was purchased by us (Joe & Colleen Suo) and moved to the present Herkimer, NY location.
This post card belongs to the modern era of Poly-Chrome post cards.

I Think I Can!

This post card shows one of the early trains headed up to the top of Pikes Peak. It looks like it would be a good illustration of the tale of the little train that kept saying, “I think I can; I think I can..”

The words at the bottom of the picture tell us that this is happening at Shady Springs Colorado. This quote comes directly from the people who operate the Pikes Peak Cog Railroad, "The story behind Shady Springs really is not that great. It is a set of natural springs that have pooled together under a stand of trees. So Shady Springs is essentially a set of springs under the trees. It is, however, a favorite spot for bears in the summer time." My wife and I plan on being there in September; maybe we will see some bears!!

When we turn the post card over we are overwhelmed by the amount of information that can be gleaned from the back. First, it is a post card that was printed in the Undivided Back Era. The bottom left clearly states that “THIS SIDE IS FOR THE ADDRESS ONLY.” That means that it was printed before March 1, 1907. Then, when we look at the postmark we find out that it was mailed just 4 days after the changes at the post office took effect. This card was mailed on March 5, 1907 which means it was mailed 4 days into the Divided Back Era. After March 1st the left side of the post cards were reserved for the address of the receiver but the right hand side could be used for a short message. Evidently, this new twist in the post cards was not advertised well enough for the sender to know this. Her message in still crammed onto the front, bottom of the post card: “Hope you are feeling as well as I am.”

Second (or third if you include the postmark information), his card was printed in Germany. The logo in the top left has the word Germany under it. Two cities in Germany are also mentioned after the name of the post card publisher: Leipzig and Dresden.

Fourth, the company that printed the post card was The American News Company. This information comes from the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York: “Founded by Sinclair Tousey in 1864 this firm became a major distributor of books, magazines, newspapers, comic books and postcards exclusively through their national network of more than 300 affiliated news agencies. Nearly all of their output was in view-cards and they mostly covered the New York, mid-Atlantic region. In addition to distributing postcards, they seem to have published some as well and worked as a middleman for many smaller publishers wishing to produce cards. Most of their cards were printed in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, Germany, but they switched to American and French printers during World War One. They often became the focus of litigation from trying to monopolize distribution of printed material in the United States. Their closure in 1957 led to great difficulties in distribution, putting many small publishers out of business as well.”

Their first post cards were black and white. Then, they added Poly-Chrome post cards to their repertoire. This is one of those types of cards – again, the logo at the top left. The following information is also taken from the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York: “A German Made card printed in photo-chromolithography with heavy retouching. Its colors are bright and so flat that they almost resemble screenprints. The poly-chrome process was almost exclusively used before 1907, and was the firmís first color printing technique. Other European publishers also used the same process but without the Poly-Chrome name.
Prefix A (1903-1907). Many of these cards were reissued.
Prefix M Cards with the Poly-chrome name were also printed in the United States during the First World War, with white borders, but these lithographic cards have a grained texture. They were not always published by the American News Company.”

Fifth, it mentions above something about Prefix A. The number of this post card is “A 6447”, to that means it was printed between 1903 and 1907. This corroborates the observation above about the age of the card.

Sixth, the publisher of the post card was The Colorado News Company of Denver, Colorado. They were a publisher and distributor for The American News Company.