Anybody got a compass?

The picture on the front of this post card was taken after 1952, when the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad

purchased this locomotive from the Southern Railroad. The East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad has a lovely history. This version of the history was taken from this website: https://www.american-rails.com/etwnc.html The East Tennessee & Western North Carolina is a legendary small railroad located in its namesake states that dated to the late 19th century. The road's nickname as the Tweetsie inspired today's Tweetsie Railroad, a tourist line that hosts excursions near the original property. To railfans the attraction of the ET&WNC was due to its narrow-gauge operations, which remained in use until late 1950. However, to locals the Tweetsie was beloved for its willingness to go out of its way to help local communities from offering free rides to even doing errands for folks! What ultimately spurred the development of this classic line was the need to move raw materials, such as timber and iron, out of the mountains and to market. Interestingly, despite its remote nature the ET&WNC had multiple connections to larger, Class I systems. Today, the remaining section of the Tweetsie remains in use by shortline East Tennessee Railway. The ET&WNC's history begins in 1866 when it was originally chartered that year by the Tennessee General Assembly to connect Johnson City, Tennessee with Cranberry, North Carolina (a distance of around 32 miles) deep within the isolated Blue Ridge Mountains to serve the Tarheel State's western timber industry and iron mines. Unfortunately, a lack of any serious type of financial backing precluded any construction attempts and resulted in the charter being left undisturbed for nearly 20 years. Then in 1873 the railroad was acquired by financier Ario Pardee through his Cranberry Iron & Coal Company. Under Pardee's guidance the route was opened between Johnson City and Hampton, Tennessee on on August 22, 1881. This 14.1-mile section was extended to Cranberry by July 3, 1882 giving the railroad a total system of 34 miles; soon it was doing quite well moving primarily iron and timber from North Carolina with interchanges at Johnson City available via the Southern Railway and Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railway. The route was built to three-foot, narrow-gauge standards to reduce construction costs and more easily navigate the rugged Blue Ridge. While the ET&WNC did have grades as high as 3% and 4%, overall it was a masterfully engineered line designed by Thomas Matson. Early on the railroad became well-known by locals for its kind-heartedness (giving it another name as the Railway with a Heart, it even used heart-shaped punches for its tickets), which carried on throughout the years. For instance, during lean times such as the Great Depression the railroad helped out by offering folks free trips to wherever they were going. Through World War I little changed for the ET&WNC until it opened a 32-mile extension to the northeast at Boone, North Carolina known as the Linville River Railroad in 1919. Overall, the Tweetsie) was a 66-mile railroad during peak operations with two very short branches in the Tarheel State that connected Minneapolis and Pineola. At this time freight traffic consisted of not only iron and timber but also furniture, other wood products, tanneries, brick, and agriculture. There were also two rayon plants that sprang up around Elizabethton, which offered the railroad additional traffic. While the ET&WNC did offer passenger services the railroad was unique in that in never operated scheduled passenger trains year-round, only during the summer months. Despite this setup, due to the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and scenery along the tracks thousands of tourists were drawn to the property annually to ride the trains. For power, the company used primarily, narrow-gauge 4-6-0 ten-wheelers although it also operated small 0-8-0 switchers as well. The decline of the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad began in 1940 when historic flooding along the Linville River Railroad east of Cranberry forced the entire section to be abandoned due to little online traffic (aside from curious tourists) and the cost of repairs. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the decision on March 22 of that year and the Tweetsie again became just a 34-mile system. While World War II offered the ET&WNC strong traffic this rapidly declined following the conflict as the local remaining iron and timber industry disappeared. With no reason to continue operating its route between Elizabethton and Cranberry, the section was abandoned with the final train operating the line on a warm but somber October 16, 1950. What remained was about a 10-mile section between Johnson City and Elizabethton that primarily served the rayon plants and had already been operating as a dual-gauge line for several years. Through the 1960s the railroad continued to use steam power (#207-208), two former Southern 2-8-0 Consolidations it acquired in 1952. One of those – #207 – is pictured on the front of this post card. The company finally decided to switch to diesel locomotives when it swapped its 2-8-0s with the Southern for a pair of Alco RS3s, #209-210. The railroad would also pick up two former Southern Pacific RS32s, #211-212. During the diesel era the company's livery was nothing fancy, consisting of a simplified version of the former Southern freight scheme; black with an orange lower stripe and gold numbering/lettering. In 1983 the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad name disappeared forever when the property was purchased by the Green Bay Packaging Company and renamed it as the East Tennessee Railway. Today, the line is still known by the same except it now a part of the Genesee & Wyoming family of shortlines with connections to both Class Is CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern. Interestingly, one of the ET&WNC's steamers was saved following the closure of the narrow-gauge lines in 1950 and today operates on the Tweetsie Railroad, 4-6-0 #12.

The post card was published by Railcards.com. They are the ones who came up with the title of this blog by writing it on the back of this post card.

A Very Short, Short Line

The locomotives on the front of this post card belong to the

Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad. Here they are shown working for the McAlester Fuel Company. Both engines were built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in the early 1900s. This website has a very good, concise history of the railroad: http://aslrr.net/dardanelle-russellville-railroad/ The Dardanelle and Russellville Railroad (D&R) operates on 4.8 miles of rail in Russellville, AR. It began operation on August 15, 1883 when it mainly hauled cotton and other agriculture products until 1900 when it shifted to mostly coal. The railroad carried coal until the 1950s when the last underground mines of McAlester Fuel Company were closed. That is the same year in which regular passenger service came to an end. Arkansas Shortline Railroad worked with the city leaders and bought the D&R in 1988 when the railroad was in severe financial difficulties. Within the first year, carloads increased by 282% and over 600 jobs directly connected to the railroad were saved from relocation. Currently the D&R offers full service transload in the yard for the companies Potlach-Deltic, AnPro (Division of the Mars Company), Denali, PolyQuest, and Gator Joist. They also place cars for the companies Stella Jones, West Fraser, Cunningham Metals, and Pet Solutions. The D&R also provides rail scales for their customers and interchange with the Union Pacific. The DR was chartered in 1883 and opened on August 15 of that year. The company was reorganized under its present name on January 13, 1900. Regular passenger service ended in 1950.

This is another post card from my collection by the publisher Railcards.com. The publisher no longer operates.

Switcheroo

The 0-8-0 wheel arrangement appeared early in locomotive development in the United States, during the mid-1840s. The configuration became popular and was more commonly constructed as a tender locomotive. It saw extensive use as a heavy switcher and freight engine.

The locomotive on the front of this post card is an 0-8-0 type of locomotive working for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Beginning in 1844, Ross Winans developed a series of 0-8-0 types for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, starting with a vertical-boiler design where the crankshaft was directly above and geared to the rear driving wheel. With a horizontal boiler, this became the Mud Digger class of engines on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, of which twelve were built. In late 1847, the B&O moved to abandon geared drives and, in 1848, Baldwin delivered the first of a series of 0-8-0 freight engines. The USRA 0-8-0, designed by the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was a standard class during the First World War. This was the standard heavy switcher of the USRA types, of which 175 examples were built by ALCO, Baldwin and Lima for many different railroads in the United States. After the dissolution of the USRA in 1920, an additional 1,200 examples of the USRA 0-8-0 were built. In the 1920s the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted the best motive power possible to handle the switching chores at their yards and interchanges. Built in their own Juniata Shops, the PRR C1 class, at 278,000 lb, was the heaviest two-cylinder 0-8-0 switcher ever produced. The calculated tractive effort was 76,154 lb. The last steam locomotive to be built in the USA for a Class I railroad was 0-8-0 no. 244, a Class S1 switch engine erected by the Norfolk and Western Roanoke shop in December 1953.

The post card was published by RAILCARDS.COM out of Alameda, California. The webite does not exist any more, so I presume that the company went out of business. This is one of two hundred and four post cards that I have from this publisher. It is the third largest group of post cards in my collection.

Still Going Strong after all these Years (the railroad, not the locomotive)

The locomotive on the front of this post card is working for the Burlington Route, as you can see on the tender. It is number 3003.

The complete name of the Burlington Route is the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The following information comes from Wikipedia: The earliest predecessor of this railroad, the Aurora Branch Railroad, was chartered by act of the Illinois General Assembly on October 2, 1848. The Illinois General Assembly chartered the Aurora Branch Railroad on February 12, 1849, to build a branch of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad to Aurora,[1] which it opened on September 2, 1850. Another amendment, passed February 28, 1854, authorized the company to build east from Aurora to Chicago via Naperville, and changed its name to Chicago and Southwestern Railroad. The latter provision was never acted upon,[5] and was repealed by an act of February 14, 1855, which instead changed the name to Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q).[6] The Aurora-Chicago line was opened on May 20, 1864, by which time the CB&Q had, through acquisitions, acquired a main line from Chicago to Galesburg, where it split into branches for Burlington and Quincy. This website provides some interesting colour commentary on the Burlington Route. https://www.american-rails.com/cbq.html Some railroads were seemingly destined to become strong, profitable operations. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy was one such example. Its history traces back to the pre-Civil War period when trains near or west of the Mississippi River remained a relative novelty. During the mid-19th century the "Q's" earliest predecessor had established through service to Chicago and then spent the next several decades rapidly expanding. Its slogan, "Everywhere West," was quite befitting for this classic Midwestern granger. While the CB&Q did operate many secondary, agricultural branches it also boasted important through corridors to the Twin Cities, Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, southern Montana, and even reached the Gulf Coast! The Burlington was also quite close with the communities it served and highly visible in the public eye. It maintained an impressive fleet of high-class trains in addition to hosting its allying roads' transcontinental services. The long sought merger with the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle, finally became a reality in early 1970 forming the gigantic Burlington Northern system. Today, all of the Burlington's principal lines remain in operation under successor BNSF Railway.

CB&Q No. 3003 is a Class S-4 (4-6-4) "Hudson" type steam locomotive built in 1930 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. If you would like to see the locomotive today, it is preserved on a plinth at a park in Burlington, Iowa. The post card was published by the Audio Visual Designs company in Earlton, New York after 1963 – there is a zip code in their address.

Freddy has his own Bridge

Freddy is Frederick, Maryland - and the bridge crosses over the Monocacy River. The information here comes from Wikipedia: The Monocacy River Railroad Bridge and Viaduct is a 326-foot (99 m) open deck steel girder bridge with two main spans crossing the river and two viaduct sections crossing the floodplain, south of Walkersville, Maryland. Originally constructed by the Frederick and Pennsylvania Line Railroad Company (F&PL). Construction began in late 1871, and continued until July 1872 when the railroad opened that year. It was rebuilt by the Pennsylvania Railroad first in 1900-1905 as an open deck riveted iron plate under girder bridge.

This is the bridge seen in the picture on the front of this post card. In 1915, the bridge was surveyed as part of the Interstate Commerce Commission's ("ICC") effort to establish freight rates for the parent railroad. In 1927, the Pennsylvania Railroad rebuilt the bridge again using deeper and thicker steel girders, but leaving the masonry piers intact. In 1972, the two 85 foot river spans were washed out by Hurricane Agnes. In 1982, the State of Maryland purchased the bridge as part of the railroad line. In 1995, the State rebuilt the river spans and Pier 3 which is located in the middle of the river crossing was completely reconstructed using concrete to replace the original masonry foundations. In 2015, the State performed minor maintenance on the structure and painted some spans. As of 2016, the bridge is in active rail service, operated by the Walkersville Southern RR.

The post card was printed by Curt Otto Teich in about 1913. I pick that up from the code at the middle, bottom of the back of the card. Between 1908 and 1928 the company printed cards with the code A- something. There were 124,180 cards printed using this numbering system. When I interpolate A-35803 between A-1 and A-124180: A-1 is in 1908 and A-124180 is in 1928. That puts A-35806 in the year 1913.

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No Longer in Service

The train on the front of this post card is Boston & Maine Railroad’s locomotive Number 1402. It was a class B-1 5b Mogul Type of locomotive

(2-6-0) dashing south on the Morning of January 8, 1956 out of Peterborough, New Hampshire with a local freight. I wrote about the Boston & Main Railroad, in general, a few months ago. I have cut and pasted that information here: The Boston & Maine (B&MRR) came into existence on March 15, 1833 when the Andover and Wilmington Railroad received a charter to build a railroad joining the two cities to each other. On June 27, 1835, the Boston and Maine Railroad of New Hampshire was chartered. The B&MRR no longer operates as the namesake railroad. At the time, it was the largest of New England's railroads and for over 180 years has served the territory well. During the company's height it maintained more than 2,000 miles with 25,000 employees. Its by-line was “Route of the Minute Man”. This was a reflection of the civilians who were at the ready to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War. It covered the state of Massachusetts north and west from its home base of Boston. Today's B&MRR is much different than the one of last century. What is left of its historic network is operated by Pan Am Railways, previously known as Guilford Rail System. That would make the railroad over 188 years old. I was able to get more specific information about the Boston & Maine in Peterborough, New Hampshire from this part of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Railroad The Monadnock Railroad was one of many extension line railroads built to help expand the Fitchburg Railroad/Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad into New Hampshire. This line was to serve the New Hampshire towns on the eastern side of Mount Monadnock, mainly Jaffrey and Peterborough. The Monadnock opened from Winchendon to Jaffrey, New Hampshire in December 1870 and then to Peterborough by late spring 1871, from which the Peterborough and Hillsborough Railroad could take traffic further north to Concord. The Boston, Barre and Gardner Railroad, running south from Winchendon, leased the Monadnock in 1874 in order to have a line to Concord. In 1880, the BB&GRR fell on hard times and transferred the lease to the Cheshire. The Monadnock became part of the Fitchburg, along with the entire Cheshire, in 1890 and then to the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1900. As a line of the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M), the Monadnock served as part of a long through route between Worcester, Massachusetts and Concord under the name of the Worcester and Hillsboro (sometimes Worcester and Contoocook) branch. In the 1940s, the line was one of the most scenic, rural Yankee branch lines. Through service ended on the line after the floods caused by the 1938 Hurricane, but local passenger trains continued to run until 1953. The line survived intact until 1972 when the B&M abandoned the line between Jaffrey and Peterborough. The remainder of the line continued until 1984 when Guilford abandoned it. This website has a timeline related to the history of the Boston & Maine Railroad. I provide the first four entries below. There is a total of 159 dates and events listed at this website: http://www.nashuacitystation.org/history/boston-and-maine-corporation/ Here are the first 4 entries in the Corporate Timeline: June 5, 1830 Boston and Lowell Rail Road Corporation incorporates by special act of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. March 15, 1833 Andover and Wilmington Rail Road Corporation incorporates in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. June 23, 1835 Nashua and Lowell Railroad Corporation [New Hampshire] incorporates by special act of the State of New Hampshire. June 27, 1835 Boston and Maine Railroad [1835] incorporates by special act in the State of New Hampshire.

The post card was published by Mary Jaynes’ Railroad Specialties, Inc. I have 243 of her post cards in my collection. This post card was published after 1979, which was the 25th anniversary of something. Here is a close up of the logo at the bottom of the post card. Maybe you can figure it out!!

Salt Lake City to Oakland on the Western Pacific Railroad

The train on the front of this post card is on its way from Salt Lake City

to Oakland. It is traveling on the Western Pacific Railroad line constructed along the Feather River in California. That little building you see toward the bottom is Belden Station. The information about Belden Station and the Feather River Route was taken from these two websites: From www.fs.usda.gov/internet/stelprdb5397333 and from www.YankeeHillHistory.com In Mrch of 1903, the Denver Rio Grande Railroad financed the creation of the Western Pacific Railway in California. The march was on to create a passage to Oakland and San Francisco for the Denver Rio Grande Railroad. A survey party was dispatched along the North Fork of the Feather River to finalize that portion of the route. The Utah Construction Co. began work on the railroad here in 1905 for Western Pacific Railroad. The whole route was completed in 1909 and covered 927 miles from Salt Lake City to Oakland. The Feather River route was chosen as a low-elevation passage through the Sierra Nevada, following the erosional cut of the Feather River through the crest. From Oroville to Beckwourth Pass, the line was constructed to allow for only a maximum 1% grade for the entire climb, as well as for the entire 927 miles of rail between San Francisco & Salt Lake City. Improved access helped to begin an era of recreation in the Feather River Canyon. As early as 1911, Western Pacific publicized the Feather River route as the scenic route. The trains would stop at the resorts popping up along the route. You and the family could take a train in the morning, fish all day and return that evening to Oroville. If you wanted to spend the weekend or even longer, these stops provided lodging. In 1912 a round trip from Oroville to Beldon was $1.10 Folks would catch the Western Pacific’s “Fisherman’s Special” up to Belden for a weekend of prized Rainbow Trout at the Riverside Resort. Settlers and miners living at Humbug Valley brought wagons down the Longville Road, south to the rail station at Belden Town. The original wooden bridge was replaced with a steel bridge in 1912. From 1909 to 1937 the railroad was king of the canyon.

The post card was published by Souvenir Novelty Company. I have 21 post cards that they published in my collection. The company existed in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1910 to 1927. It was a publisher of local souvenir books and postcards in lithography. Many of their cards were printed by Curt Teich. The dividing line between correspondence and the address sections tells us that this post card, indeed, was printed by Curt Teich. Edward H. Mitchell was a partner in the Souvenir Novelty Company: March 4, 1914 “Mr. Edward H. Mitchell has purchased our interest in the Souvenir Publishing Company".