Gone. But, Not Forgotten.

The photo on the front of this post card is a picture of one of the diesel locomotives that Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe) ordered

from General Electric's locomotive division. It is a U-28 CG model of locomotive; one of many U-series locomotives known as U-boats by train enthusiasts. Santa Fe was the only railroad company to order any of these - and they only ordered ten of them. They were numbered 350 through 359 when they were delivered for passenger service. The CG in the model nomenclature indicates that there was a steam generator on board the locomotive so that it could heat up the interiors of the passenger cars that it pulled. It was located between the cab and the engine compartment. The tanks under the locomotive were divided into two compartments with two different refilling openings so they could each hold both fuel and water. The ten locomotives were delivered in August and September of 1966 and put immediately to use to replace the aging F-units that Santa was using. You can see that the company painted these engines with the famous "Warbonnet" paint scheme. These locomotives stayed in passenger service until a serious accident on February 9, 1969 involving another engine from the U-series. Santa Fe re-geared these locomotives from 77:26 (for speedy passenger service) to 77:18 (for powerful freight service). When they were switched to freight service they were also renumbered into 7900 through 7909. These ten engines stayed in service until September of 1980, when the last one was scrapped.

These locomotives now only survive in pictures. The post card was published by Vanishing Vistas. It is a company that is still around today. It is owned by Richard Cox who started it in 1967 with the specific intention of helping locomotives survive, if only in pictures. The company is headquartered in Rocklin, California, a city very close to Sacramento. You may also notice that the picture was taken by Lyman E. Cox. I do not know, but I would be willing to guess that the two are related. The post card came from my "Large Cards" collection; it is approximately 14 by 22 centimeters (5 1/2 by 8 3/4 inches). It takes up one whole page of the album.

Nicholas Morant

The picture on the front of this post card was taken by Nicholas Morant.

For those of us who are "foamers" along the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) right of way west of Calgary, Nicholas Morant is a sort of icon or hero. Although he photographed many aspects of Canadian life and he was a great nature photographer, we "foamers" know him for the pictures of the CPR in the Rockies and the curve that the CPR named after him near Lake Louise at milepost 113 on CPR’s Laggan Subdivision. This post card shows the actual Curve that Morant made famous:

On the main line, so that the engineers and conductors can see it, there is a sign that says: "Morant's Curve" straight down from where the photographer of this picture is standing. This is looking west from an observation point along Highway 1A (Bow Valley Parkway). The picture on the front of this post card, below, is facing east from the same vantage point:

I strongly suggest that you look up Nicholas Morant on line, or in the library, to see what wonderful Black & White as well as colour photographs he developed. There is one book of which I am aware that features his work: Nicholas Morant's Canadian Pacific by J. F. Garden.

At only 19 years old, Nicholas Morant from Kamloops, British Columbia, began his photographic efforts with the CPR in 1929. He was hired on as the “special photographer”. He worked with the CPR almost continuously (there were 2 "shifts" not with the CPR) until he retired in 1981. He died March 13, 1999, in Calgary, Alberta at the age of 88.

He spent many hours at the Stoney Creek Bridge in Rogers Pass atop a specially constructed scaffolding where he photographed the special passenger train in the first post card, above, in 1955. This train is a special edition with Princess Margaret aboard. It is following the tracks of the famous Canadian transcontinental service.

As you can imagine, photographing around a railway in the mountains can be hazardous. An example of this is the story of when Morant and a Swiss guide encountered and were attacked by a grizzly bear. It happened in 1939. The guide eventually died of his injuries while Morant spent three months recovering in a hospital. The incident happened near the Morant's Curve featured in the other two post cards.

The first post card was published by Vanishing Vistas. It is copyrighted by Lyman E. Cox out of Sacramento, California in 1974. The middle post card is published by Altitude Publishing - the photo is copyrighted by Douglas Leighton. The bottom post card is the result of the efforts of The Postcard Factory from Markham, Ontario, Canada.